•safe 


™  ^»«^  i  inn  1 1  inn  in  linn  mi 


onomica 


FREEDOM  OF  INTERNATIONAL  EXCHANGE 

the  Sole  Method  for  the 
Permanent  and  Universal  Abolition  of  War, 

with 
a  Statement  of  the  Cause  and  the  Solution  of  the  European  Crisis, 

and 

a  Sketch  of  the  Only  Possible  Conclusive  Settlement 
of  the  Problem  Confronting  the  World 

BY 

HENRI  LAMBERT        ^ 

Manufacturer  in  Charleroi  (Belgium) 
Titular  Member  of  the  Societe  d'Economie  Politique,  of  Paris 


4  'No  Treaty  of  Peace  is  worthy  of  its  name,  if  contained 
therein  are  the  hidden  germs  of  a  future  War." 

KANT,  Essay  on  Perpetual  Peace 

"Pax  Economical  solving  word,  saving  truth,  necessary 
asset  of  Democracy,  new  departure  in  the  History  of 
Mankind!  " 


C\J 


NEW  YORK: 

JOHN  C.  RANKIN  COMPANY 

216  WILLIAM  STREET 
AUGUST  1917 


GIFT   OF 


PAX  ECONOMICA 


c 


FOREWORD 

Three  years  of  a  war  more  murderous,  ruinous  and  hideous 
than  human  imagination  ever  could  have  conceived,  the  un- 
expected duration  and  the  continuous  aggravation  of  the  most 
perilous  crisis  which  could  confront  the  world,  the  impending 
menace  of  a  break-down  of  civilization,  to  which  some  grave 
symptoms  already  point,  do  not  appear  to  have  brought  the 
governments,  statesmen  and  leaders  of  thought  any  nearer  to  the 
conception  of  a  settlement  that  a  civilized  mind  could  call  a 
" solution"  of  the  international  situation. 

Very  few  among  our  contemporaries  seem  yet  to  realize  that 
Force  cannot  "solve"  international  problems  any  more  than 
other  problems,  cannot  make  the  world  more  secure  in  the  future 
than  it  has  made  it  in  the  past,  cannot  establish  a  peace  worthy 
to  be  lived,  cannot  save  civilization — that  these  results  can  be 
attained  only  by  justice  and  morality  in  international  relations. 

Many  indeed  speak  of  "international  justice."  But  these 
are  words  without  significance,  if  they  are  not  in  accordance  with 
international  truth.  Though  truth  always  is  justice,  what  we  call 
and  think  to  be  justice  is  not  often  truth. 

Cognition  of  international  truth  must  be  sought  through  a 
statement  of  facts  and  the  formation  of  a  sound  theory  to  be 
derived  therefrom;  the  advent  of  international  justice  and  of  a 
lasting  peace  can  be  expected  only  through  the  expression  of  a 
practical  proposal  responding  to  facts  and  theory. 

We  are  confident  that  we  offer  such  a  proposal  to  our  fellow- 
men  in  the  conclusion  of  the  following  study  of  the  world's 
problem.  We  do  not  propound  new  ideas;  for  more  than  six 
years  before  the  outbreak  of  the  war  we  have  contended,  wherever 
we  have  been  able  to  do  so,  that  only  an  economic  understanding 
proceeding  from  a  high  and  broad  principle  of  freedom  and  equity 
applied  to  the  fundamental  relations  of  the  nations  could  avert 
from  humanity  the  catastrophe  of  a  European  conflagration;, 
since  the  very  first  day  of  the  war  we  have  maintained,  not  only 
that  a  "  Pax  Economica"  can  be  a  permanent  peace,  but  also  that 
no  other  line  of  settlement  offers  a  means  and  a  prospect  of  putting 
an  end  to  the  process  of  mutual  extermination  and  ruin  of  the  nations. 


As  time  passes,  it  is  apparent  and  it  will  become  more  and 
more  so  that  there  exists  no  other  feasible  escape.  Between 
the  nations  the  situation  has  developed  in  such  a  way,  and  with 
circumstances  and  consequences  of  such  gravity,  that,  even 
if  they  would,  it  has,  for  the  belligerents  of  either  side,  become 
impossible  to  submit  to  the  will  and  power  of  the  enemy.  BUT 

IT  FORTUNATELY  REMAINS  POSSIBLE  FOR  BOTH  SIDES  TO  SURRENDER 
TO   A   PRINCIPLE. 

This  is,  that  freedom,  equity,  equality  in  the  economic  rela- 
tions, rights  and  opportunities  of  the  nations  form  the  natural  and 
necessary  basis  of  international  harmony,  security  and  peace. 

Europe  and  the  world  can  be  saved  only  through  the  un- 
conditional submission  of  all  nations  to  this  great  moral  truth, 
the  fundamental  international  truth. 

It  remains  uncertain  whether  the  necessity,  for  any  useful 
and  fruitful  consideration  of  the  peace  problem,  of  starting  from 
this  principle  and  truth,  will  be  recognized  before  the  "  reservoir 
of  human  material' '  and  the  laboriously  accumulated  wealth 
of  the  nations  are  exhausted,  and  before  Mankind's  future  for 
centuries  is  compromised.  Such  recognition  shall  not  be  wanting 
on  account  of  any  lack  of  efforts  on  our  part. 

It  is  not  in  our  power  to  secure  support  for  our  ideas  and 
exertions;  we  can  only  deserve  it.  Professors,  politicians,  clergy- 
men, pacifists,  businessmen  who  privately  declare  their  accord 
with  our  contention,  may  persist  in  systematically  ignoring  the 
fundamental  aspect  of  the  world's  problem;  they  may,  notwith- 
standing the  momentous  emergency  of  the  times,  prefer  to  refrain 
from  publicly  expressing  themselves  on  the  primary  condition 
of  the  solution  of  the  world's  crisis.  Our  duty  will  be  fulfilled  if 
we  continue  to  show,  as  best  we  can,  what  clearly  appears  to  be 
the  only  way  of  salvation. 1  With  all  due  modesty,  but  conscious 
of  the  greatness  of  the  task,  we  shall  get  inspiration  in  the  future 
as  we  have  in  the  past  from  the  motto  of  the  great  William  the 
Silent:  "Point  n'est  besoin  d'espe*rer  pour  entreprendre,  ni  de 
re*ussir  pour  perseVeYer. "  (In  undertakings  one  needeth  not  to 
hope,  and  perseverance  hangeth  not  on  success.) 
New  York,  June,  1917.  H.  L. 

1  Since  this  was  written,  we  have  had  the  satisfaction  of  reading  the 
book  entitled  "The  World  at  War"  (MacMillan,  New  York),  by  Georg 
Brandes,  in  the  conclusion  of  which  the  great  author  declares  his  unreserved 
agreement  with  our  ideas  and  thesis.  We  express  here  to  Georg  Brandes 
our  high  appreciation  of  his  support,  and  we  reproduce  in  our  Appendix  the 
conclusion  of  his  book. 

4 


CONTENTS 


PART  I 

THE  ECONOMIC  CAUSE  AND  SOLUTION   OF   THE  EUROPEAN 

CRISIS.     A  Statement  of  Facts 9 

i.  The  economic  condition  of  international  harmony  and  security. 
2.  The  ethics  of  international  trade.  3.  Fair  play  to  be  substituted 
for  privilege  in  international  trade  relations.  4.  The  cause  of  the 
European  conflict.  5.  The  only  farsighted  policy:  to  live  and  let  live. 
6.  The  solution  of  the  European  problem.  7.  The  case  of  Belgium, 
Alsace-Lorraine,  and  other  nationalities.  8.  The  logical  treatment  of 
the  questions  of  disarmament  and  of  international  arbitration.  9. 
Conclusion:  a  natural  and  stable  peace  must  be  a  "Pax  Economica. " 

PART  II 

INTERNATIONAL   MORALITY  AND   EXCHANGE.     Considerations 
upon  the  basic  condition  of  permanent  and  universal 

Peace 33 

i.  The  economic  fundamentals  of  international  morality.  2. 
International  economic  justice.  3.  International  law.  4.  The  "laws 
of  civilized  warfare."  5.  Disarmament  and  "freedom  of  the  seas." 
6.  Diplomacy,  Democratic  Control,  International  Arbitration  and  the 
" Super-national  Grand  Council."  7.  The  problem  of  nationalities. 
8.  Modern  wars  and  peace.  9.  The  international  morality  of 
exchange.  10.  Conclusion:  the  natural  necessity  of  international 
exchange. 

PART  III 

After  three  years  of  war:  Quo  vadis  ?  o  genus  hominum  I 

THE  WAY  OF  SALVATION:  AN  ECONOMIC  PEACE 65 

i.  Fundamental  Justice.  2.  Free  Trade,  the  only  possible 
peacemaker.  3.  "Reductio  ad  absurdum."  4.  Past  failures  and 
present  duty.  5.  The  Democratic  Peace.  6.  Armageddon  and 
Madness.  7.  The  Revolt  of  truth  against  error.  8.  The  peace  of 
wisdom  and  love.  9.  The  whole  pacifist  "  secret. "  10.  Article  first 
of  the  Treaty  of  Economic  Peace. 

Two  PROTECTIONIST  FALLACIES 73 

PART  IV 

THE  TREATY   OF   ECONOMIC   PEACE,  being  a  sketch  of  the 

conclusive  settlement  of  the  international  problem. .   79 


APPENDIX 

1)  AN  OPEN  LETTER  TO  MR.  WOODROW  WILSON,  PRESIDENT 

OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA,  published  by  the 
Nieuwe  Rotterdamsche  Courant,  the  8th  of  October, 
1914 89 

2)  A  MESSAGE  ON  FREE  TRADE  AND  PEACE,  to  the  Society 

of  Friends  and  other  Christians 95 

3)  THE  WORLD  AT  WAR  (conclusion)  by  Georg  Brandes 99 


Part  I 

THE  ECONOMIC  CAUSE  AND  SOLUTION  OF  THE 
EUROPEAN  CRISIS 

A  Statement  of  Facts 


"Free  Trade  is  the  best  peacemaker.91 — RICHARD  COBDEN. 

Should  this  not  read:     Free  Trade  is  the  only  peacemaker?— 

THE  AUTHOR. 


THE  ECONOMIC  CAUSE  AND  SOLUTION  OF  THE 
EUROPEAN  CRISIS1 

In  the  present  circumstances  it  is  very  difficult  to  lay  aside 
the  passions  and  prejudices  that  are  inseparable  from  the  particu- 
lar interests  of  nationalities  and  to  regard  the  questions  at  issue 
solely  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  general  interests  of  Europe 
and  of  the  World.  And  yet  such  a  frame  of  mind  is  indispensable 
for  one  who  wishes  to  find  a  just  and  permanent  solution  of  the 
European  problem.  Nor  is  this  international  attitude  any  the 
less  necessary  if  we  restrict  our  aim  to  the  search  for  a  specific 
adjustment  which,  by  securing  the  good-will  of  all  the  parties 
interested,  will  invite  their  careful  consideration  of  the  proposal. 

The  international  situation  of  to-day  is  due  to  a  series  of 
circumstances  affecting  the  particular  interests  of  nations  and 
in  which  national  psychological  factors  have  played  a  part  which 
is  neither  contested  nor  contestable.  But  the  real  "causes,"  the 
original  and  deep  seated  causes,  are  of  a  far  more  general  char- 
acter, connected  with  the  very  nature  and  necessity  of  things. 
Any  " pacifist"  conception  that  offers,  side  by  side  with  the 
theoretic  principles  of  a  final  and  complete  human  agreement,  a 
practical  means  of  putting  an  end  to  the  international  hostility 
that  threatens  European  civilization  with  ruin  and  extermination 
must  consider  these  ultimate  causes.  Standing  aloof  from  all 
particular  national  interests  such  consideration  belongs  to  the 
sphere  rather  of  philosophy  than  of  politics. 

The  war  will  of  necessity  be  followed  by  a  peace,  but  the 
universal  and  permanent  peace  that  each  of  the  belligerents 
declares  to  be  its  supreme  purpose  will  not  be  the  achievement  of 
superiority  of  arms,  nor  of  skilful  strategy,  nor,  alas!  of  the  bravery 
of  soldiers :  these  forces  will  be  capable  only  of  imposing  a  tempor- 
ary peace,  consisting  in  the  subjection  and  oppression  of  the 
conquered.  A  peace  worthy  of  the  name,  worthy  of  true  civiliza- 
tion, will  be  the  achievement  of  the  thought  of  those  who  shall 
secure  the  acceptance  of  a  just  conception  of  the  mutual  rights 
of  nations.  Universal  and  permanent  peace  will  be  established 
upon  the  basis  of  justice — or  never  at  all. 

1  November,  1914.  Translated  from  the  French  for  and  published  by 
the  Papers  for  War  Time  (Oxford  University  Press)  edited  by  the  Reverend 
William  Temple. 


i.    THE   ECONOMIC   CONDITION   OF   INTERNATIONAL   HARMONY 
AND  SECURITY 

True  justice  in  international  relations  is  before  all  and  beneath 
all  a  policy  that  favors  the  economic  development  of  all  nations, 
without  excluding  any.  While  the  production  of  wealth  is  not 
the  supreme  aim  and  object  of  humanity,  and  economic  prosperity 
can  never  complete  and  consecrate  the  temple  of  human  progress, 
it  does  nevertheless  provide  its  material  structure,  and  the  right 
of  every  nation  freely  to  build  up  this  edifice  according  to  its 
national  needs  and  ideals  is  inalienable.  And,  since  the  growth 
of  the  material  prosperity  of  nations  is  the  necessary  and  funda- 
mental condition  of  their  intellectual  and  moral  advance — for 
we  cannot  conceive  of  true  civilization  as  a  product  of  poverty— 
their  right  to  the  fullest  economic  development  compatible  with 
the  wealth  of  their  soil  and  their  own  capacity  for  useful  effort  is 
natural  and  indefeasible — a  divine  right  in  the  holiest  sense  of 
the  term.  Now  the  economic  development  of  a  nation  is  in- 
separable from  the  constantly  extending  operations  of  its  exchanges 
with  other  nations.  Exchange  is  thus  seen  to  be  the  fundamental 
fact  and  the  essential  right  in  international  relations.  Every 
political  hindrance  to  exchange  is  a  blow  dealt  to  international 
rights.  Freedom  of  exchange  will  be  the  tangible  manifestation 
and  the  infallible  test  of  a  condition  of  true  justice  in  the  relations 
between  different  peoples.  And  in  default  of  this,  international 
right — and  peace,  which  stands  or  falls  with  it — will  continue  to 
lack  a  real  and  solid  foundation. 

Peace  will  be  assured  by  law  when  nations  realize  and  put 
into  practice  true  international  law,  fundamentally  characterized 
by  freedom  of  trade,  and  susceptible  of  recognition  by  all  because 
respecting  the  primary  interests  of  all.  As  we  shall  indicate  later, 
freedom  of  trade  will  gradually  simplify  and  facilitate,  to  the 
extent  of  making  them  at  last  perfectly  natural,  the  solutions 
of  the  difficult,  and  probably  otherwise  insoluble,  problems  that 
arise  either  from  the  affinities  or  from  the  diversities  of  nationalities 
in  race,  character,  and  language. 

Until  international  law  and  international  justice  are  thus 
made  one  and  inseparable,  humanity  will  continue  to  experience 
only  periods  of  more  or  less  precarious  peace,  necessarily  dependent 
upon  the  will  and  the  interests  of  those  nations  that  have  the 
greatest  force  at  their  disposal. 


10 


We  must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that,  under  modern  con- 
ditions of  war,  only  those  nations  that  can  command  great  eco- 
nomic resources  can  be  very  powerful  in  arms.  Now  it  is  certain 
that  these  nations  will  finally  come  to  insist  upon  freedom  of  trade. 
Progress  cannot  be  coerced ;  failing  of  its  normal  fulfilment  through 
the  agency  of  ideas,  it  would  attain  its  realization  by  force. 

Moreover,  it  is  freedom  of  international  trade  which  alone 
can  give  to  a  nation's  industries  that  stability  and  security  of 
imports  and  exports  which  is  indispensable  to  them;  whilst  in  the 
absence  of  such  security  powerful  nations  that  are  careful  of  their 
future  neither  can,  nor  should,  consent  to  abandon  the  conception 
of  economic  prosperity  guaranteed  or  protected  by  military  power. 
Whatever  objections  may  be  urged  to  this  conception,  there  is  no 
doubt  that  the  great  nations  and  their  governments  will  never 
consent  to  abandon  it  until  international  economic  liberty  and 
security  are  finally  established.  Tariff  restrictions  are  the  worst 
obstacles  to  the  advent  of  that  true  civilization  which  will  be 
marked  by  peace  with  disarmament.  Such  a  civilization  and  such 
a  peace  will  be  possible  only  under  the  conditions  of  economic 
justice  and  security  that  will  result  from  free  trade. 

Richard  Cobden  said:  "Free  trade  is  the  best  peacemaker." 
We  may  confidently  affirm:  "Free  trade  is  the  peacemaker." 

2.    THE  ETHICS  or  INTERNATIONAL  TRADE 

The  pacifists  have  not  sufficiently  insisted  upon  this  truth, 
of  primary  importance,  that  economic  interests  are,  to  an  ever- 
increasing  extent,  the  cause  and  the  aim  of  international  politics, 
and  that  protection  separates  these  interests  and  brings  them 
into  mutual  opposition,  whereas  free  trade  would  tend  to  unite 
and  consolidate  them. 

For  the  vast  majority  of  individuals,  harmony  of  sentiment 
can  arise  only  from  harmony  or  solidarity  of  interests,  and  what- 
ever unanimity  may  exist  between  them,  harmony  of  sentiment 
will  not  withstand  for  long  the  shock  of  antagonistic  interests. 
Is  it  not  inevitably  the  same  with  national  sentiment? 

"Immediately  after  the  War  of  Independence,  the  thirteen 
United  States  of  America  indulged  themselves  in  the  costly 
luxury  of  an  internecine  tariff  war  .  .  .  and,  at  one  time, 
war  between  Vermont,  New  Hampshire,  and  New  York  seemed 
all  but  inevitable."1  Rhode  Island's  controversy  with  the  other 

1Mr.  Oliver,  quoted  by  Lord  Cromer  in  a  report  to  the  International 
Free  Trade  Congress,  of  Antwerp  (August,  1910). 

II 


States  created  the  same  danger.  But  soon  after  the  founders  of 
the  American  Republic  recognizing  the  mischievous  possibilities 
of  " intercolonial"  tariffs  wisely  took  from  the  newly  established 
States  of  the  Union  the  power  to  levy  tariffs  against  one  another's 
goods.  When  the  Swedes  established  restrictive  tariffs  against 
the  products  of  Norway,  the  dissolution  of  the  union  of  the  two 
countries  was  predicted  by  Norwegians  of  high  scientific  and 
political  standing;  ten  years  later  this  prediction  was  confirmed 
by  the  event.  And  some  years  ago,  the  vine-growers  of  the  Aube 
determined  to  declare  civil  war  upon  those  of  the  Marne  because 
an  attempt  had  been  made  to  establish  economic  and  protective 
frontiers  between  these  two  districts.  Is  it  conceivable  that,  in 
the  present  industrial  epoch,  peace  should  continue,  even  for  so 
long  as  one  generation,  between  the  English  and  the  Scotch, 
between  the  Italians  of  the  north  and  those  of  the  south,  between 
the  Prussians  and  the  southern  Germans,  between  the  Austrians 
and  the  Hungarians,  between  the  French  of  the  north  and  the 
French  of  the  south,  between  the  States  of  the  American  Union, 
if  tariff  frontiers  were  re-established  between  these  groups? 

It  is  the  adoption  of  free  trade  within  a  nation's  own  borders 
that,  by  consolidating  and  unifying  its  economic  interests, 
furnishes  the  real  support  and  solid  foundation  of  national  concord 
and  unity;  it  will  be  the  adoption  of  free  trade  between  nations 
that  will  have  to  accomplish  the  same  work  in  the  wider  interna- 
tional sphere.  We  must,  then,  consider  as  a  fatal  error  the  too 
widely  spread  idea  that  free  trade  can  only  be  the  ultimate  result 
of  a  good  understanding  between  the  nations:  the  truth  is  that 
free  trade  is  the  indispensable  preliminary  condition  of  any  good 
understanding  that  is  to  be  permanent. 

Yet  the  predominant  importance  of  the  choice  between 
protection  and  free  trade  in  international  relations  lies  rather  in 
moral  considerations  than  in  material  interests.  This  is  due 
particularly  to  the  fact  that  whilst  protection,  which  means  privilege 
tending  to  monopoly,  is  a  manifestation  of  international  injustice, 
free  trade,  which  means  equality  of  opportunities  offered  by  and 
afforded  to  all  nations,  is  the  very  embodiment  of  international 
justice.  And  such  justice  and  injustice  are  fundamental,  since  they 
apply  to  the  basic  relations  between  nations,  bearing  upon  their 
vital,  material  necessities.  And  further,  the  material  interests  of 
nations,  in  other  words  their  physical  interests,  form  the  concrete 
substratum,  indispensable  and  natural,  for  their  intellectual  and 
moral  interests. 

12 


In  order  that  international  politics  should  be  controlled 
advantageously,  no  longer  by  the  material  interests  of  men,  but 
by  their  intellectual  and  moral  aspirations,  it  would  first  of  all 
be  requisite  that  international  methods  of  dealing  with  material 
interests  should  be  at  least  tolerable.  If  men  are  incapable  of 
dealing  successfully  with  their  international  material  interests, 
how  can  they  be  competent  to  deal  successfully  with  their  inter- 
national intellectual  and  moral  interests,  which  are  so  far  more 
complex ! 

The  pacifists  have  far  too  much  neglected  in  the  past,  and  they 
continue  to  neglect,  these  realities  of  the  ideal  with  which  they  are 
inspired,  and  it  is  this  that  explains,  to  a  great  extent,  the  in- 
effectiveness of  their  noble  efforts.  They  have  preached  the  spirit 
of  conciliation  in  the  policy  of  States  toward  one  another,  interna- 
tional arbitration,  disarmament;  but  in  so  doing  they  have  not 
attacked  the  cause  of  all  the  evil.  Militarism,  international 
quarrels,  bellicose  spirit,  armaments,  and  even  "race  hatred" 
are  in  our  day,  and  particularly  amongst  the  great  European 
nations,  merely  effects,  of  which  the  cause  is  to  be  sought  in 
antagonism  of  economic  interests,  due  in  the  great  majority  of 
cases  to  Protection. 

3.    PAIR  PLAY  TO  BE  SUBSTITUTED  FOR  PRIVILEGE  IN  INTERNATIONAL 
ECONOMIC   RELATIONS 

It  will  not,  however,  be  necessary,  in  order  to  bring  about 
the  beginnings  of  an  era  of  universal  and  permanent  peace, 
that  every  nation  should  embrace  the  policy  of  ideal  economic 
justice  that  would  be  realized  in  complete  free  trade:  it  will  be 
enough  that  three,  or  perhaps  two  only,  of  the  most  advanced  and 
most  powerful  nations — England  and  Germany,  with  France  or  the 
United  States — realizing  at  length  their  true  general  interests, 
economic,  social,  and  political,  and  drawing  their  inspiration  from 
the  principles  of  free  trade,  should  adopt  "tendencies"  definitely 
directed  towards  commercial  liberty,  and  should  impress  similar 
tendencies  upon  the  policy  of  secondary  nations,  by  example, 
by  influence  and,  if  need  be,  by  legitimate  pressure  in  the  form  of 
withdrawal  of  commercial  privileges. 

Hitherto,  and  especially  during  the  last  thirty  years  or  so, 
the  policy  of  the  great  nations,  with  the  exception  of  England, 
has  followed  a  course  diametrically  opposed  to  this.  Taking  as 
their  guiding  principles  ill-will,  jealousy,  and  self-interest — a 

13 


self-interest,  be  it  noted,  grotesquely  misunderstood,  revealing 
an  inconceivable  misconception  of  economic  truth  and  a  no  less 
incredible  folly — the  great  nations  have  not  ceased  to  increase  their 
efforts  to  secure  isolation,  mutual  exclusiveness  and  mutual 
constraint  by  means  of  protective  tariffs  and  of  privileges  and  mon- 
opolies. The  economic  foreign  policy  of  each  nation  has  consisted 
above  all  else  in  the  attempt  to  apply  to  other  nations  a  treatment, 
in  the  matter  of  tariffs  and  of  opportunities,  against  which  it 
itself  would  hasten  to  protest  energetically  and  even,  if  need  be, 
by  force  of  arms,  were  there  any  suggestion  of  the  application  to 
itself  of  such  a  treatment.  Such  a  policy,  as  logically  inconsistent 
as  it  was  unjust,  was  bound  sooner  or  later — especially  as  it  was 
applied  in  an  epoch  marked  by  an  immense  development  of 
industries — to  lead  to  a  catastrophe.  Could  the  continuation 
of  such  a  policy  leave  room  for  any  hope  of  the  advent  of  that 
reign  of  peace  and  goodwill  among  nations  to  which  humanity 
aspires?  It  is  at  once  logical  and  obvious  that  mankind  can  never 
hope  for  such  a  reign  of  peace  until  some  at  any  rate  among  the 
great  nations  resolve,  in  their  economic  relations  with  other  States, 
to  conform  to  the  maxim  which  sums  up  all  rules  of  conduct, 
and  to  obey  the  Golden  Rule  at  least  in  this  implication:  do  not 
do  to  others  what  you  would  not  that  they  should  do  unto  you. 

Moreover,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that,  in  the  sphere  of 
domestic  policy,  protection  is  a  system  of  robbery  and  impoverish- 
ment of  the  masses  of  consumers  for  the  benefit  of  privileged 
minorities  of  producers;  that  it  is  thus  based  upon  the  spirit  of 
injustice  within  the  State,  as  well  as  toward  other  States;  and  that 
it  would  be  contrary  to  the  sound  nature  and  sacred  logic  of  facts, 
and  almost  blasphemous,  to  expect  from  such  a  political  system 
that  it  should  produce  anything  else  but  evil  and  disorder  wherever 
it  is  put  into  practice. 

Because  she  has  failed,  or  perhaps  because  she  has  not  suffi- 
ciently sought,  to  induce  other  nations  to  adopt  the  policy  of 
economic  liberty  and  equality  of  opportunities,  to  which  she 
herself  adhered,  Great  Britain  suffers  with  them  the  consequences 
of  their  errors;  for  not  only  the  sowers  of  the  wind  of  discord,  but 
they  who  made  no  strenuous  and  effective  efforts  to  stop  them 
must  share  in  the  reaping  of  the  flaming  whirlwind  that  follows. 

But  the  storm  is  one  that  never  should  have  burst:  it  could 
have  been,  and  ought  to  have  been,  prevented. 

14 


4.    THE  CAUSE  OF  THE  EUROPEAN  CONFLICT 

The  United  Kingdom  comprises  45,000,000  inhabitants, 
and  their  industries  and  their  trade  have  at  disposal  the  markets 
of  colonies  which  extend  over  a  fourth  of  the  surface  of  the  globe, 
are  capable  of  supporting  several  thousand  million  inhabitants, 
and  are  now  occupied  by  about  400  millions.  The  British  people 
sends  out  their  sons  and  export  their  products,  in  complete  security 
and  stability,  into  these  possessions,  of  which  some,  and  those  not 
the  least  important,  give  a  privileged  position  to  British  products 
by  means  of  differential  tariffs. 

France,  especially  if  due  allowance  is  made  for  her  limited 
needs,  desires,  and  capacity  for  outward  expansion,  is  in  an 
analogous  position.  Moreover,  she  introduces,  for  the  benefit 
of  her  producers,  a  highly  privileged  system  of  tariffs  wherever 
she  establishes  her  rule. 

Russia  and  the  United  States  have  vast  territories  with  great 
natural  resources,  far  exceeding  the  needs  of  their  populations. 

The  Empire  of  Germany  has  a  population  of  approximately 
70,000,000,  constantly  growing  at  the  rate  of  nearly  a  million  a 
year.  Their  industries  and  their  trade  are  assured  only  of  their 
home  markets  and  of  certain  colonial  markets  of  relative  insignifi- 
cance. The  territory  of  the  German  Empire  is  exactly  one-tenth 
of  that  of  the  British  Empire,  and  will  be  capable  of  occupation 
in  the  future  only  by  a  very  limited  number  of  additional  inhabit- 
ants and  additional  consumers  of  German  products. 

So  far  as  her  outlets  of  population  and  her  markets  are 
concerned,  Germany,  with  her  very  considerable — and  entirely 
legitimate — needs,  desires,  and  capacity  for  outward  expansion, 
is  placed,  it  must  be  admitted,  in  a  position  which  is  not  only  an 
inferior,  but  also  a  precarious  one.  For  the  idea  of  protection 
places  all  intercourse  between  nations  upon  a  footing  of  mere 
tolerance,  which  may  at  any  time  be  transformed  into  complete 
intolerance,  extending  as  well  to  human  beings  as  to  merchandise. 

Assuredly  it  is  not  one  of  the  least  disadvantages  of  Protection 
that  it  involves  a  general  instability  and  insecurity,  both  for  those 
who  adopt  it  and  for  those  against  whom  it  is  directed.  Germany, 
by  her  adherence  to  Protection,  caused  to  others  and  suffered 
herself  these  disadvantages.  Did  not  Russia  announce,  in  July 
1914,  that  she  was  contemplating  radical  alterations  in  the  Russo- 
German  commercial  treaty  expiring  in  1916?  Was  not  France 
preparing  to  secure,  by  means  of  fresh  additions  to  her  tariffs, 

15 


the  resources  required  for  the  application  of  the  three-year  service 
law?  Is  there  an  assured  majority  of  citizens  in  the  United  States 
converted  to  the  policy  of  freer  imports?  And  can  we  exclude  the 
possibility  that  in  a  few  years'  time  England  may  have  a  majority 
of  electors  favoring  proposals  of  tariff  reform  and  the  formation 
of  a  vast  economic  empire  of  closed  markets? 

It  cannot  then  be  contested  that,  so  far  as  her  outlets  and 
foreign  markets  were  concerned,  Germany's  economic  position 
was  unstable,  uncertain. 

It  is  true  that  an  elementary  understanding  of  her  true 
interests,  both  economic  and  political,  ought  long  ago  to  have 
induced  her  rulers  to  adopt  a  free  trade  policy,  by  gradually 
reducing  the  barriers  of  her  Zollverein,  and  inviting  other  countries 
to  extend  to  her  a  similar  treatment.  Had  these  rulers  done  this, 
how  easy  it  would  have  been  for  them  and  how  advantageous,  in 
answer  to  the  proposals  for  disarmament  made  to  them  from  time 
to  time,  to  insist  that  a  great  industrial  nation  cannot  rest  satisfied 
with  precarious  markets,  and  that  there  can  be  for  it  no  disarma- 
ment failing  economic  security,  the  primary  element  of  national 
security.  Germany  would  thus  have  won  the  sympathy,  the 
support  and  the  eager  co-operation  of  free  trade  England,  as  well 
as  of  Holland,  Belgium,  Denmark,  Switzerland,  and  the  majority 
of  enlightened  public  opinion  in  all  the  nations  of  the  world. 

But  Germany  and  her  rulers  have  not  chosen  such  a  policy 
of  truth,  progress,  justice,  and  peace.  They  have  been  subservient 
to  the  particular  interests  of  narrow  or  unscrupulous  agrarians 
and  manufacturers;  they  have  accepted  the  disinterested  but  false 
theories  of  their  professors  of  "Nationale  Wirtschaf t " J ;  they 
have  been  fascinated  too  by  the  idea  of  an  economic  and  military 
imperialism  of  the  German  race,  and  they  have  preferred  the  atti- 
tude of  conquerors,  who  fail  to  understand  and  refuse  to  recognize 
any  other  advantages  than  those  which  may  be  secured  by  force. 

Did  this  attitude  of  Germany,  clumsy  and  pitiful  as  it  has 
been,  make  it  any  the  less  foolish  and  impolitic  of  other  nations 
to  expect  her  to  accept  as  final  the  inadequate  and  precarious 
position  created  for  her  by  her  past  history  and  by  that  of  other 
nations,  as  well  as  by  her  own  political  mistakes  in  the  present 

1How  can  it  be  explained  that  the  German  savants  and  leaders  have  not 
realized  that  Germany  owes  her  powerful  economic  development  not  to  the 
system  of  protection,  but  in  great  part  to  the  system  of  free  trade  established 
between  twenty-nine  States  formerly  separated  by  customs  frontiers,  number- 
ing half  a  century  ago  less  than  40,000,000  inhabitants,  and  to-day  nearly 
70,000,000  free  trade  producers  and  consumers? 

16 


day?  Should  not  a  true  political  wisdom,  revealed  in  foresight 
and  justice,  have  prescribed  one  of  two  courses:  either  that  the 
other  nations  should  agree  to  facilitate  the  formation  by  Germany 
of  colonial  dominions  of  her  own,  which  a  very  intelligible  pride 
and  economic  necessity  alike  prompted  her  so  eagerly  to  desire, 
•  or  that  they  should  offer  her  stable  assurances  and  compensations, 
capable  of  satisfying  both  her  pride  and  her  interests,  by  under- 
taking to  throw  open  to  her,  if  not  their  home  markets,  at  any 
rate  those  of  their  colonies?  It  would,  of  course,  have  been 
understood  that  the  German  colonies  should  also  be  thrown  open 
to  free  international  intercourse. 

Nothing  was  done  in  this  direction,  indeed  quite  the  contrary 
policy  was  pursued.  The  plutocrats,  the  militarists,  and  the  war 
party  in  Germany  were  left  in  possession  of  an  almost  imperative 
argument  in  their  favor,  and  thus  the  other  nations  helped  to 
maintain  and  embitter  the  spirit  of  conquest  in  the  German  people. 

Economic  mistakes,  political  blindness  and  rashness,  an 
inadequate  conception  of  international  justice  on  the  part  of  all 
the  nations  and  their  governments,  such  were  the  real  causes  of 
the  cataclysm  that  is  now  overwhelming  Europe  and  all  mankind. 

5.      THE     ONLY     FARSIGHTED     POLICY!      TO     LIVE     AND     LET     LIVE 

Is  it  too  late,  or  can  it  be  too  soon,  for  a  general  admission 
of  guilt?  Errare  humanum,  perseverare  diabolicum.  Instead  of 
allowing  the  abominable  and  wicked  work  of  ruin  and  extermina- 
tion to  continue,  is  it  not  the  duty  of  the  rulers  of  all  nations, 
toward  God  and  mankind  alike,  to  use  their  best  efforts  for  a 
reconciliation  based  upon  truth  and  justice? 

It  is  their  duty  toward  God,  for  the  Providential  design  to 
perfect  human  progress  obviously  involves  the  association  and 
co-operation  of  peoples  as  well  as  individuals  by  means  of  exchange 
of  services,  and  not  their  isolation,  mutual  exclusion,  suppression 
or  subjection.  Is  not  the  interchange  of  the  products  of  labor  the 
natural  primary  fact  from  which  all  progress,  all  civilization 
directly  or  indirectly  originates?  It  is  their  duty  toward  man- 
kind, because  men  will  become  worthy  to  enjoy  the  peace  of 
nations  to  which  they  aspire,  when,  under  the  guidance  of  en- 
lightened and  conscientious  leaders,  they  have  been  permitted 
to  grasp  the  idea  of  human  solidarity  by  the  primary  means  of 
exchange,  from  which  will  spring  the  infinite  ramifications  of 
mutual  service.  And  it  is  their  duty  toward  mankind  again, 
because  this  is  threatened  in  all  that  is  noblest,  strongest  and 

17 


best  in  humanity  and  all  that  is  most  valuable  and  most  useful 
in  things,  that  is  to  say  in  the  objects  of  its  worthiest  pride,  its 
dearest  affections  and  its  highest  hopes. 

And  besides,  why  continue  the  sacrifice  of  countless  victims 
and  the  adding  of  ruin  to  ruin?  It  is  highly  probable  that,  in 
spite  of  incalculable  sacrifices  of  men  and  wealth  on  both  sides, 
there  will  be  in  this  war  neither  conquerors  nor  conquered:  Ger- 
many will  be  restrained,  she  will  not  be  crushed.  There  will 
have  to  be  "an  adjustment. " 

And  it  is  better  that  it  should  be  so,  for  war  can  no  more  be 
definitely  conquered  by  war  than  oppression  by  oppression, 
injustice  by  injustice,  evil  by  evil. 

There  will  have  to  be  an  adjustment:  it  will  be  necessary  to 
agree  to  mutual  concessions  in  satisfaction  of  the  main  legitimate 
demands.  And  there  will  have  to  be  an  effort  to  make  this 
adjustment  final,  with  a  view  to  a  universal  and  lasting  peace. 

The  writer  of  these  lines  believes  that  he  has  shown  that 
it  would  be  advantageous  and  politic  to  assure  to  Germany 
a  more  stable  economic  position.  He  believes,  also,  that  he 
has  proved  that  there  can  be  no  permanent  peace  failing  the 
adoption  of  a  policy  inspired  by  justice  in  international  economics, 
and  thus  "  tending  "  toward  freedom  of  commerce,  to  find  its 
consummation  in  universal  free  trade. 

A  final  adjustment  that  will  make  for  permanent  peace 
involves,  then,  in  the  first  place,  agreements  sanctioning  the 
removal  of  tariff  restrictions  between  the  belligerent  countries — 
or  at  any  rate  the  gradual  lowering  of  tariffs  with  a  guaranty  to 
all  of  equal  and  reciprocal  treatment.  All  other  reforms  that  are 
the  objects  of  legitimate  national  hopes  or  intents  must,  in  order 
to  be  profitable,  be  the  consequences  or  corollaries  of  this  equitable 
economic  adjustment. 

Such  an  adjustment  of  tariffs  would  also  be  imperative  if, 
contrary  to  all  probability,  this  war  should  end  in  crushing  defeat 
for  one  or  other  of  the  adversaries — a  supposition  necessarily 
involving  the  sacrifice  of  twenty,  thirty,  fifty  millions  of  human 
lives,  on  the  field  of  battle,  in  towns  and  country  districts,  by 
wounds,  by  sickness,  and  by  privation — involving  too  the  destruc- 
tion of  incalculable  artistic  and  economic  wealth,  and  probably 
alas!  the  annihilation  of  innocent  Belgium,  which  will  not  be  the 
least  of  European  crimes. 

Let  us  suppose,  indeed,  that  the  victors  impose  upon  the 
vanquished  an  inequality  of  tariffs  that  places  them  in  a  position 

18 


of  economic  inferiority,  and  that  mankind  thus  reverts  to  the 
system  of  national  servitude  in  a  modern  guise.  Is  there  any 
man  of  foresight  or  indeed  of  simple  common  sense  who  thinks 
that  it  is  possible  to  reduce  to  servitude  and  keep  in  that  condition, 
under  whatever  form  or  by  whatever  means,  nations  of  which  some 
comprise  even  now  and  the  others  will  comprise  within  a  century 
hundreds  of  millions  of  individuals?  Certainly  not  half  a  century 
would  elapse  before,  the  whirligig  of  time  bringing  its  revenges, 
the  oppressed  would  take  advantage  of  fatal  dissensions  among 
their  oppressors — for  how  many  alliances  last  half  a  century? — 
and  reverse  the  positions  with  the  acclamation  of  all  the  peoples 
that  have  remained  outside  the  present  conflict  and  its  results. 

Looking  at  the  matter  exclusively  from  the  point  of  view  of 
the  victors,  whoever  they  may  be,  the  only  wise  and  far-sighted 
policy  will  be  that  which  has  ever  been  the  best:  to  be  just,  to 
live  and  let  live.  Apart  from  the  imposition  of  equitable 
indemnities,  nothing  durable  and  advantageous  and  compatible 
with  subsequent  peace  could  be  done  beyond  imposing  upon  the 
vanquished  the  obligation  to  abolish  or  reduce  considerably  their 
customs  duties,  while  granting  them  fair  reciprocal  treatment. 
It  is  worth  while  to  emphasize  here  the  fact,  too  much  overlooked 
by  manufacturers  and  merchants,  that  such  abolition  of  customs 
duties  would  be  the  only  reasonable  and  effective  method  of 
suppressing  that  act  of  war  applied  to  industrial  competition, 
known  as  " dumping,"  for  which  German  industries  have  been 
justly  blamed. 

If  we  have  proved  that  the  original  cause  of  the  present 
war  was  economic,  that  it  can  be  ended  satisfactorily  only  by 
an  economic  adjustment,  and  that  such  an  adjustment  could  be 
introduced  at  once,  have  we  not  also  proved  that  it  would  be 
criminal  to  continue  the  work  of  ruin  and  massacre?  Is  it  con- 
ceivable that  for  the  sake  of  securing  financial  "war  penalties" 
the  English,  Germans,  and  French  should  demand  the  sacrifice 
of  countless  more  lives  of  their  sons  and  their  brothers?1 

*It  is  not  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  if  the  war  were  to  end  by  the 
crushing  of  one  or  other  of  the  two  sides,  it  would  last  for  at  least  three  more 
years;  it  would  absorb  almost  all  the  available  capital  of  Europe;  and  from  it 
would  result  unutterable  suffering  and  destitution.  No  doubt  it  would  be  an 
insult  to  the  intelligence  of  our  statesmen  to  suppose  that  they  do  not  under- 
stand that  the  result  would  be,  at  no  distant  date,  the  social  revolution  of 
Europe — unless,  indeed,  not  enough  men  were  left  to  cany  it  out.  But  there 
would  always  be  electors  enough  left  to  deprive  of  power  the  incompetent 
representatives  of  imbecile  ruling  classes. 

19 


6.  THE  SOLUTION  OF  THE  EUROPEAN  PROBLEM 

The  system,  no  less  absurd  and  inconsistent  than  unjust, 
of  mutual  economic  isolation  and  exclusion  between  nations, 
vigorously  and  widely  adopted  in  the  last  thirty  years  or  so  amid 
the  utmost  development  of  industrialism,  was  the  substantial, 
deep-rooted,  and  ever-present  cause  of  European  dissensions  and 
of  the  terrible  conflict  of  the  present  time. 

A  really  effective  peace  movement  must  undertake  to  remove 
this  disturbing  cause. 

But  no  doubt  it  would  be  a  task  impossible  of  realization, 
especially  in  the  midst  of  the  struggle,  to  rid  Europe,  at  a  blow, 
of  the  whole  mass  of  obstacles,  consisting  of  tariff  laws,  restrictions, 
and  prohibitions,  which  make  it  impossible  for  her  peoples  to  be 
united  and  consolidated  (even  in  spite  of  themselves)  by  an 
indestructible  network  of  economic  interests.  Besides,  every 
undertaking  must  have  a  beginning. 

Now  despite  appearances  and  superficial  incidents,  the 
question  of  colonial  outlets — of  'a  place  in  the  sun' — has  hardly 
ever  ceased  to  be  the  central  factor  in  Germany's  legitimate 
anxieties  and  the  nodal  point  of  all  complications  that  have  arisen. 

It  is  then  the  colonial  system  that  should  be  the  first  object 
of  reform — not  only  because  we  should  then  be  dealing  with  the 
real  cause  of  the  difficulty,  but  because  it  is  precisely  on  the 
question  of  the  reform  of  their  colonial  administration  that  the 
nations  would  soonest  and  most  easily  come  to  an  understanding. 

Among  the  politicians  of  France,  among  the  economists 
of  that  country,  and  also  in  industrial  and  commercial  circles, 
the  idea  has  grown  up,  under  the  stimulus  of  facts,  that  the 
French  colonies  are  suffering  from  the  narrowness  of  the  economic 
system  resulting  from  their  " protective"  tariff.  On  several  oc- 
casions this  opinion  found  expression  in  the  Chamber  of  Deputies, 
and  a  Premier  was  able  to  assert,  without  raising  a  protest  or  a 
denial,  that  the  system  of  the  "open  door"  ought  to  be  applied 
to  all  the  French  colonies,  because  it  is  apparently  the  indispensable 
condition  of  their  prosperity.  What  is  true  of  the  French  colonies 
is  true  of  all  other  "protected"  colonies. 

A  CONFERENCE,  IN  WHICH  ALL  THE  NATIONS  OF  THE  WORLD 

SHOULD    BE    INVITED    TO    PARTICIPATE,    SHOULD    BE    SUMMONED    AT 

ONCE  (in  a  neutral  country  and  under  favor  of  an  armistice  which 
appears  to  be  possible  for  such  a  purpose),  ENTRUSTED  WITH  THE 

20 


TASK  OF  MAKING  AN  AGREEMENT  BETWEEN  ALL  COLONY-HOLDING 
NATIONS  THROWING  OPEN  THE  COLONIES  OF  ALL  TO  THE  FREE 
TRADE  OF  ALL.1 

This  conference  would  further  set  before  itself  the  object  of 
reaching  a  second  agreement,  by  which  as  large  a  number  of  nations 
as  possible  would  bind  themselves  gradually  to  reduce  the  tariffs 
of  the  mother  countries. 

(This  reduction  might,  for  example,  take  place  at  the  rate 
of  5  per  cent,  per  annum,  without,  however,  any  *  obligatory' 
fall  in  import  duties  below  50  per  cent,  of  what  they  are  at  present. 
Example  and  results  would  be  responsible  for  the  rest.  We 
suggest  here  that  no  measure  would  be  better  calculated  for  creat- 
ing international  goodwill  and  good  faith,  for  arriving  at  an  early 
and  ensuring  a  durable  peace,  for  giving  a  certain  guarantee  for 
the  future  welfare  and  progress  of  mankind,  than  would  be  an 
immediate  reduction  by  Germany  of  50  per  cent,  of  her  customs 
duties  in  agreement  with  Great  Britain  for  the  continuation 
of  her  Free  Trade  Policy.  Is  it  too  much  to  expect  from  the 
United  States  that  they  should  in  conjunction  therewith  adopt 
an  international  economic  policy  more  worthy  of  a  truly  human 
and  Christian  civilization  as  well  as  of  a  young,  vigorous  and  great 
nation  endowed  with  the  largest,  richest  and  most  generous 
territory  of  the  world?) 

Both  agreements — that  affecting  the  colonies  and  that 
affecting  the  mother  countries — should  be  concluded  for  a  period 
of  fifty  years.  It  is  extremely  irrational  and  dangerous  and 
moreover  contrary  to  sound  law  to  conclude  international  agree- 
ments ad  aeternum,  that  is  to  say,  without  any  limit.  Such 
agreements,  like  all  contracts,  should  be  made  for  a  definite  period 
and  renewable.  They  would  thus  have  a  greater  precision  of 
meaning  and  would  involve  a  more  formal  moral  obligation.  An 
international  treaty  without  the  stipulation  of  a  period  involves 
the  mental  reservation  rebus  sic  stantibus. 

The  colonial  agreement  would  apply  not  only  to  present, 
but  also  to  future  colonies;  this  would  give  it  its  full  value  and 
would  remove  a  great  danger  of  subsequent  dissension. 

The  throwing  open  of  the  colonies  to  international  free- 
dom of  trade  would  not  necessarily  mean  the  immediate  abolition 
of  all  colonial  tariffs,  but  it  would  imply  the  immediate  extension 
to  the  commerce  of  all  nations  of  identical  economic  treatment  in  all 

xThe  British  autonomous  colonies  should  necessarily  participate  in  a 
conference  and  in  any  agreements  as  independent  states. 

21 


colonial  markets,  that  is  to  say,  the  suppression  of  exclusive  and 
privileged  'spheres  of  influence1  and  the  adoption  of  equality  of 
general  economic  opportunities  or  the  system  of  the  'Open-Door.' 
England  would  thus  have  to  surrender  and  refuse  for  the  future 
the  preference  granted  her  in  Australia,  Canada,  and  South 
Africa;  in  doing  this  she  would  only  be  following  the  example  of 
Holland,  which  has  refused  any  preference  in  her  colonies  for  her 
home  products.  On  the  other  hand,  France,  Germany,  and  the 
other  nations  would  throw  open  to  British  activities  their  colonial 
territories — and  this  applies  to  territories  which  are  four  times  as 
large  as  Europe,  and  in  which  trade  and  industry  are  all  the  more 
capable  of  development,  because,  under  the  restrictions  of  privilege, 
they  are  at  present  relatively  insignificant. 

The  objection  may  be  urged  to  the  system  of  freedom  of 
trade — and  also  to  that  of  equality  of  treatment  in  the  matter 
of  tariffs  and  economic  opportunities — that  these  systems  might 
prove  unfavorable  to  the  interests  of  poor  or  less  wealthy  colonies, 
some  of  which  necessitate  constant  sacrifices  on  the  part  of  their 
mother  countries:  for  if  the  latter  no  longer  derived  any  direct 
advantages  or  compensations  in  return  for  their  sacrifices,  they 
might  neglect  such  colonies.  But  it  is  easy  to  conceive  some 
clause  in  the  colonial  agreement,  stipulating  that  the  whole 
or  some  part  of  the  expenses  of  the  mother  country  should  be 
redistributed  among  the  nations  in  proportion  to  the  amount 
of  their  respective  trade  with  the  colony  concerned.  The  natural 
result  of  this  would  be  a  system  of  co-operation,  with  a  control 
which  would  be  the  best  guarantee  for  the  profitable  employment 
of  the  money  spent  and  for  the  good  administration  of  the  less 
prosperous  colonies. 

Such  a  system  would  in  every  respect  be  the  equivalent  of  the 
internationalization  of  the  colonies — without  its  disadvantages 
and  its  difficulties — and  it  may  be  proposed  as  a  method  of  just 
and  loyal  association  or  co-operation  of  all  nations  in  the  universal 
work  of  colonization. x 

*As  early  as  1908,  on  the  occasion  of  the  discussions  on  the  annexation, 
the  author  had  suggested  the  internationalization  of  the  whole  "Conventional 
Basin"  of  the  Congo  (comprising  the  Belgian,  French,  British,  German  and 
Portuguese  Congo  colonies),  together  with  the  application  of  the  system  of 
free  trade  (or  of  the  "Open  Door")  in  all  other  colonies  of  the  world  as  the 
only  means  of  dispersing  the  heavy  clouds  that  threatened  Europe.  He 
again  proposed  this  solution  of  the  European  difficulties  in  1910,  in  a  study 
on  "La  Belgique  et  le  Libre  Echange,"  in  1913  under  the  title  "Pax 
(Economica,"  in  a  pamphlet  published  by  the  Ligue  du  Libre  Echange  of 

22 


Finally,  these  two  agreements — affecting  respectively  the 
colonies  and  the  mother  countries — would  be  the  decisive  step 
in  the  direction  of  universal  free  trade  and  peaceful  industrial 
civilization. 

Need  it  be  pointed  out  that  the  great  lesson  in  justice  and 
civilization  that  would  result  from  such  an  adjustment  on  pacifist 
lines,  would  be  calculated  to  make  a  profound  impression  in 
Germany,  where,  after  all,  men  with  minds  capable  of  embracing 
anew  ideas  of  liberty  and  justice  remain  in  a  vast  majority?  And 
it  would  be  calculated  to  detach,  in  her  foreign  and  domestic 
policy  alike,  the  liberal  and  democratic  parties,  as  well  as  the  most 
clear-sighted  of  her  manufacturers  and  merchants,  from  the 
parties  of  plutocratic  reaction  and  militant  imperialism. 

We  have  said  over  and  over  again,  but  we  do  not  hesitate  to 
repeat  once  more,  that  it  is  not  by  force  that  the  spirit  of  militarism 
and  of  conquest  can  finally  be  overcome:  It  can  only  be  by  the 
adoption  of  the  principles  of  truth  and  justice  in  international 
politics. 

7.    THE  CASE  OF  BELGIUM,  ALSACE-LORRAINE  AND 
OTHER  NATIONALITIES 

The  author  of  the  present  paper  has  had  two  objects  in  view: 
to  provide  a  theoretic  formula  for  universal  and  permanent 
peace — that  is  summed  up  in  the  term  free  trade — and  also  a 
practical  formula,  resulting  from  it,  for  the  adjustment  on  pacifist 
lines  that  is  desirable  at  the  present  time  and  that  is  capable  of 
leading  up  to  such  a  peace. 

But  he  cannot  allow  himself  to  be  reproached  with  having 
apparently  overlooked  or  neglected  the  question  that  has  the 
most  powerful,  the  most  legitimate  and  the  most  sacred  hold 
upon  the  hearts  of  his  compatriots  and  their  friends:  the  question 
of  the  fate  of  Belgium. 

Paris,  and  in  October,  1914,  in  an  "open  letter  to  Mr.  W.  Wilson,  President 
of  the  United  States,"  which  appeared  in  the  Nieuwe  Rotterdamsche  Courant. 

Simultaneously,  in  England,  the  idea  of  free  trade  in  all  colonies  of  the 
world  as  an  essential  condition  of  a  complete  and  definitive  solution  of  the 
European  problem  was  propounded  in  a  masterly  way  in  several  books  by 
E.  D.  Morel. 

Contemporaneously,  similar  ideas  (inspired  as  it  seems  by  the  Morocco 
incident)  were  put  forward  by  two  prominent  Americans,  Mr.  Jacob  Schiff 
in  several  important  public  utterances  and  by  Rear  Admiral  F.  E.  Chadwick 
in  two  prophetic  writings:  "The  Anglo  German  Tension  and  a  Solution," 
1912;  "The  True  Way  to  Peace,"  an  address  at  the  2Oth  Lake  Mohonk 
Conference,  1914. 

23 


We  have  said  that  an  'adjustment'  is  inevitable,  that  is  to 
say,  a  many-sided  agreement  embracing  equitable  concessions  on 
both  sides.  But  no  peace  and  no  adjustment  are  possible — nor 
desired,  by  any  Belgian,  that  do  not  involve  the  restoration  of 
Belgian  independence  and  the  freedom  of  Belgian  territory. 

Equitable  moral  compensations  and  material  indemnities 
will  be  due,  moreover,  to  this  nation,  the  victim  and  the  martyr 
of  the  errors  and  quarrels  of  her  powerful  neighbors. 

Let  us  suppose  that  Germany,  recognizing  her  economic 
errors,  the  futility  of  her  conception  of  human  progress,  and  the 
defects  of  her  international  policy,  should  announce  her  acceptance 
of  the  pacifist  adjustment  that  we  have  proposed — and  that  we 
hereby  submit  to  the  statesmen  of  the  world;  let  us  suppose 
that  Germany,  announcing  her  desire  to  resume  her  place  in  the 
ranks  of  civilized  nations,  should  pledge  herself  to  evacuate 
Belgium  and  to  indemnify  her — with  or  without  the  concurrence 
of  the  other  belligerents.  It  would  only  be  France  that  could  urge 
any  objections.  England  obviously  would  only  be  too  happy  to 
see  Germany  enter  upon  the  path  of  an  economic  policy  on  liberal 
lines  and  moreover  in  conformity  with  her  own.  Russia  has  no 
colonies  (unless  we  regard  Siberia  as  such),  and  it  does  not  seem 
unlikely  that  she  might  be  inclined  to  become  a  party  to  a  possible 
agreement  between  the  European  nations,  tending  toward  greater 
freedom  of  trade  in  the  future.  Austria  is  in  precisely  the  same 
position. 

But  France  is  engulfed  in  the  quicksands  of  Protection; 
she  has  forgotten  the  period  of  commercial  prosperity  that  she 
enjoyed  under  the  commercial  treaties  of  the  second  Empire, 
which  from  that  point  of  view  was  more  liberal  than  the  third 
Republic;  and,  in  spite  of  the  advice  of  her  most  enlightened 
politicians,  of  her  best  economists  and  of  her  most  authoritative 
Chambers  of  Commerce,  she  might  insist  upon  maintaining  for 
her  colonies  the  hateful  economic  system  that  she  has  imposed 
upon  them:  a  system  that  has  brought  misfortune  upon  them, 
upon  herself,  and  upon  Europe.  But  I  do  not  hesitate,  as  a 
Belgian,  to  assert  that  the  government  and  rulers  of  France  must 
refuse,  eventually,  to  be  guilty  of  such  an  act  and  of  such  an 
attitude,  if  there  is  one  word  of  truth  in  the  protestations  of  eternal 
and  boundless  gratitude  which  have  been  expressed  by  France 
to  Belgium  in  the  last  two  years.  I  would  add  that  these  pro- 
testations were  not  in  the  least  extravagant,  for  on  two  occasions — 
after  Liege  and  after  Louvain — Belgium  sacrificed  herself,  without 

24 


any  material,  moral,  or  international  obligation  so  to  do,  and 
saved  France,  and  then  England,  from  the  designs  of  the  Ger- 
manic race.  I  would  venture  to  remind  France  and  England 
that  they  have  a  duty  to  fulfill:  the  duty  of  employing  every 
possible  means  of  saving  Belgium  from  the  supreme  ordeal, 
provided  these  means  do  not  prejudice  the  civilization  of  the 
future  but -rather  tend  to  promote  it. 

In  the  interests  of  future  peace  the  question  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine  must  also  receive  a  solution.  But  here  we  must  not 
overlook  the  legitimate  interests  of  the  inhabitants  of  German 
origin,  who  form  a  very  important  part  of  the  population  of  these 
districts.  Nor  must  it  be  forgotten  that  many  of  the  inhabitants 
of  French  origin  had  abandoned  the  idea  of  reunion  with  France 
on  the  condition  of  satisfactory  and  radical  alterations  in  the 
Reichsland  statute.  Is  it  impossible  to  conceive  in  these  pro- 
vinces a  government  independent  or  autonomous  satisfying  every 
legitimate  interest,  aspiration  and  feeling,  whether  French  or 
German? 

The  author  asserts  his  belief  and  indeed  his  conviction 
that  the  two  questions  of  Belgium  and  of  Alsace-Lorraine  can 
be  easily  solved  by  the  economic  agreement  which  he  proposes, 
and  which  he  considers  calculated  to  satisfy  the  legitimate  demands 
of  Germany. 

We  shall  not  deal  specifically  with  the  questions  of  Poland, 
Italia-Irredenta,  the  Balkan  States,  the  Bosporus,  Asia  Minor. 
But  it  is  easy  to  see  that  not  one  of  them  can  be  solved  in  the 
interests  of  the  populations  concerned,  of  Europe  as  a  whole  and  of 
the  world,  unless  in  the  way  suggested  by  the  principle  of  freedom 
of  trade.  Just  as  the  economic  and  fundamental  interests  of 
Alsace-Lorraine  need  continuation  of  free  relations  with  Germany, 
so  do  those  of  Poland  need  it  with  Russia,  those  of  Italia-Irredenta 
with  Austria.  The  Balkan  States  need  absolutely  free  economic 
intercourse  between  themselves  and  with  their  great  neighbors. 
The  Bosporus  and  Asia  Minor  must  be  open  to  the  commerce  of 
the  whole  world.  Those  would  not  be  satisfactory  nor  definite 
solutions  which  would  sacrifice  the  fundamental  interests  of  all 
those  countries  to  the  artificial  combinations  and  futile  considera- 
tions of  national  "greatness,"  pride  and  " power. "* 

JMuch  is  to  be  said  on  questions  like  those  raised  by  the  Panama  Canal, 
the  Suez  Canal,  even  the  Kiel  Canal,  but  above  all  by  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar. 
We  shall  limit  ourselves  to  this  expression  of  opinion:  these  questions  un- 
avoidably, sooner  or  later,  must  create  a  new  an  intolerable  and  impossible 

25 


It  is  appropriate  to  emphasize  here  the  general  truth  that 
freedom  of  international  commerce  will  greatly  facilitate  and 
simplify  the  solution  of  the  complex  and  delicate  questions  arising 
from  racial  affinities.  This  superior  condition  of  economic 
civilization,  giving  henceforward  to  all  nations  the  assured  and 
unlimited  means  of  exchanging  their  goods  and  therefore  of 
expanding  their  industries  and  trade  would  remove  the  main  and 
undoubtedly  only  serious  remaining  motive  for  war.  What 
interest  could  nations  still  have  in  organizing  huge  empires, 
embracing  numerous  peoples  and  vast  territories,  if  they  were 
certain  never  to  need  again  to  fight  either  among  their  own 
nationalities  or  against  other  peoples?  What  grounds  would 
there  remain  to  the  great  composite  nations  for  refusing  to  loosen 
or  abolish  ties  of  dependence  that  would  have  either  remained 
or  become  distasteful? 

The  spirit  of  conquest  and  domination  must  be  destroyed  by 
the  abolition  of  its  motives.  With  freedom  of  commerce,  the 
nations  would  soon  come  to  recognize  that  all  the  advantages 
that  they  hope  to  obtain  through  territorial  expansion,  through 
the  conquest  and  subjection  of  other  nations,  are  found,  with  no 
risks  and  no  drawbacks,  in  the  stability  and  security  of  relations. 
Such  a  system  alone  admits  of  the  permanent  reconstruction  and 
preservation  of  those  'natural  nationalities',  whose  aspirations 
are  among  the  noblest  and  most  legitimate  of  our  era;  for  the 
principle  which  they  embody,  as  has  been  brilliantly  proved  by 
Novicow  (La  Question  de  V Alsace-Lorraine} ,  is  the  basis  of  the 
international  as  well  as  of  the  national  and  social  order. 

8.  THE  LOGICAL  TREATMENT  OF  THE  QUESTIONS  OF  DISARMA- 
MENT AND  OF  INTERNATIONAL  ARBITRATION 
A  study  of  the  European  question  cannot  ignore  the  question 
of  armaments,  upon  which  it  may  certainly  be  noted  that  it  is  an 
extraordinary  delusion,  indeed  an  inconceivable  blunder,  to 
suppose  that  by  the  suppression  of  armies  war  would  be  suppressed, 
and  that  to  assure  peace  a  beginning  must  be  made  by  suppressing 
armies  and  "militarism."  Is  it  not  the  simple  common-sense 
truth  that,  in  order  to  be  able  to  suppress  armies  and  militarism, 
we  must  first  of  all  suppress  war — that  is  to  say,  we  must  create  a 
position  of  international  security? 

international  situation,  sure  to  evolve  in  war,  if  the  principle  of  freedom  of 
trade  is  not  accepted  henceforth  as  fundamental  in  international  relations 
and  policy.  If  this  were  so,  the  fortification  or  military  occupation  of  such 
passages  would  soon  appear  to  be  anachronistic. 

26 


Treated  in  the  customary  illogical  fashion  the  question  of 
disarmament,  or  of  mere  limitation  of  armaments,  is  inextricably 
complex  and  calculated  to  raise  the  most  dangerous  difficulties, 
not  only  between  belligerents  who  would  be  in  a  fair  way  to 
adjust  their  differences,  but  also  between  belligerents  and  neutrals, 
and  between  nations  in  actual  or  prospective  wholly  pacific  under- 
standing with  one  another.  But  the  question  could  be  readily 
solved,  either  by  agreement,  or  perhaps  by  simple  natural  causes, 
so  soon  as  it  were  attacked  logically.  This  solution  can  obviously 
only  follow  the  organization  of  international  security,  which  will 
tend  to  become  identified  with  economic  security,  as  mankind 
completes  the  transition  from  military  civilization  to  true  indus- 
trial civilization.  Disarmament  will  be  the  logical  and  natural 
consequence  of  the  establishment  of  economic  security  between 
nations. 

The  same  will  be  true  of  compulsory  reconciliation  and  of 
compulsory  arbitration  between  nations,  which  will  then  become 
acceptable  and  will  be  quite  naturally  accepted. 

9.  CONCLUSION:  A  NATURAL  AND  STABLE  PEACE  MUST  BE  A 
PAX  ECONOMICA 

Students,  statesmen,  and  pacifists  have  far  too  much  over- 
looked the  fact  that  the  evolution  of  human  progress  has  con- 
stantly and  increasingly  been  influenced  by  the  economic  conditions 
of  each  epoch.  Henceforth  political  science  must  draw  its  in- 
spiration more  and  more  from  the  data  of  economic  science,  which 
deals  with  human  relationships  in  conformity  with  the  nature  and 
necessity  of  things — that  is  to  say,  by  reverencing  natural  truth  and 
justice.  For,  humanity  being  part  of  nature,  its  evolution  and  its 
history  are  controlled  by  natural  laws,  indistinguishable  from  the 
Will  of  Providence.  Among  natural  laws,  those  of  economics, 
practical  and  basic  rules  of  life  for  individuals  and  nations  alike, 
are  the  most  important  to  observe  in  politics,  if  it  is  desired  to 
avoid  the  shocks  and  disturbances  that  periodically  convulse 
societies  and  empires. 

Mankind  in  Europe  seems  to  have  reached  the  decisive 
turning-point  of  its  history.  Material  progress  at  an  excessive 
and  abnormal  rate,  not  balanced  by  the  requisite  progress  in 
the  sphere  of  morals  and  philosophy  (a  defect  of  which  the  primary 
cause  can  be  determined),  had  created  entirely  artificial  conditions 
of  social  and  international  life  which  were  weak  and  unstable  in 
the  extreme.  In  the  sphere  of  international  relations,  the  wishes 

27 


of  a  faction,  the  discontent  of  a  monarch,  the  rashness  of  a  minister, 
the  excesses  of  a  mob,  were  sufficient  to  disturb  to  an  alarming 
extent  the  delicate  balance  of  the  tremendous  opposing  European 
forces  and  to  endanger  a  civilization  which,  though  apparently 
extremely  advanced,  was  in  reality  merely  fortuitous.  The 
problem  is  to  give  cohesion,  stability,  and  unity,  in  foundations 
and  superstructure,  to  a  world  socially  and  internationally  chaotic. 

We  are  not  here  concerned  to  deal  with  the  social  problem; 
it  is  the  international  problem  that  is  urgent.  Now  whatever 
politicians  and  pacifists  may  have  thought,  the  preservation  of 
economic  frontiers  (the  direct  consequence  of  lack  of  equilibrium 
between  utilitarian  and  philosophic  progress),  has  been  the  main 
obstacle  to  the  realization  of  intellectual  unity  and  moral  harmony 
in  Western  Europe.  That  European  Confederation,  which  is  the 
dream  of  some  thinkers,  would  be  possible,  it  will  be  admitted, 
only  if  tariff  frontiers  were  removed:  but  if  these  are  removed, 
the  political  federation  of  the  States  of  Europe  is  no  longer  needed. 
The  unique  and  fleeting  opportunity  is  now  offered  of  laying 
the  first  free  trade  foundations  of  a  co-operative  federation  of  the 
nations  of  Europe,  which  would  mark  the  beginning  of  an  era  of 
boundless  economic  and  social  progress,  as  well  as  the  advent  of 
universal  peace. 

The  Romans  had  conceived  the  idea  and  the  hope  of  a  per- 
manent '  Pax  Romana. '  The  emperors  of  mediaeval  and  modern 
Germany  have  cherished  themselves  and  fostered  among  their 
peoples  the  ambition  of  a  'Pax  Germanica. '  No  doubt  many 
friends  and  admirers  of  England  would  ardently  desire  a  'Pax 
Britannica. '  But  Truth  and  Justice,  the  eternal  twin  forces 
that  hold  sway  over  mankind,  will  never  rest  till  men  attain  to 
the  '  Pax  Economica. ' 

November,  1914. 


P.  S.  January,  1915. 

Some  say  to  me :  you  explain  (without  any  desire  to  approve 
them)  the  attitude  and  the  actions  of  Germany  on  very  just 
considerations  and  reasons,  which  however  the  Germans  them- 
selves have  never  urged.  I  reply :  it  is,  probable  that  the  Germans 
are  sensible  of  their  situation  without  being  able  to  explain  it. 
My  object  is  to  bring  them  to  a  real  understanding  of  it  because 
only  by  this  means  will  they  be  induced  to  consider  the  true 
remedy. 

28 


The  colonial  future  of  Germany  depends  on  freedom  of  trade, 
which  will  enable  her  to  acquire  colonies  that  will  be  opened  to 
all  peoples,  and  also  to  co-operate  with  other  peoples  in  their 
colonial  development  by  the  means  I  have  indicated,  (page  22.) 

It  is  possible  that  Protectionism,  Militarism  and  War  must 
march  side  by  side,  but  Free  Exchange,  Industrialism  and  Peace 
are  without  doubt  necessarily  concomitant. 

A  nation  which  bases  its  ideal  of  increasing  prosperity  on 
Plutocracy,  in  military  activity  and  conquest  has  perhaps  an 
ephemeral  interest  in  being  Protectionist.  But  those  nations 
whose  ideals  are  unhampered  development  of  industry  and 
commerce,  social  progress  and  international  peace,  have  certainly 
a  definite  interest  to  adopt  Free  Trade. 


29 


Part  II 


INTERNATIONAL  MORALITY  AND  EXCHANGE 

Considerations   upon   the   basic   condition   of  permanent 
and  universal  peace. 


Economic  freedom   is  fundamental  freedom.     Economic 
justice  and  morality  are  fundamental  justice  and  morality. 


INTERNATIONAL  MORALITY  AND  EXCHANGE* 

PEACEFUL  and  harmonious  relations  are  not  conceivable 
between  beings — individuals  or  collectivities — deprived  of  morals. 
Concord  and  peace  among  nations  can  be  the  outcome  only  of 
knowledge  and  practice  of  true  international  ethics.  These  do 
not  consist  in  the  employment  by  nations  of  any  means  enabling 
them  to  enforce  or  maintain  among  themselves  an  artificial  peace ; 
they  consist  in  the  absence  of  motives  and  desire  for  war,  the 
necessary  condition  of  a  natural  and  stable  peace.  No  alliances, 
no  " ententes,"  no  hegemony,  no  "balance  of  power,"  no  diplo- 
macy, no  treaty,  no  league  or  society  of  nations,  no  peace  "  organi- 
zation" or  "machinery"  whatever,  will  successfully  take  the 
place  of  morality  in  international  relations. 

The  author  of  the  following  reflections  will  endeavor  to 
demonstrate  that,  by  the  very  nature  and  force  of  things  economic 
co-operation  of  peoples  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  Interna- 
tional Morality  He  will  undertake  to  establish  rationally, 
without  having  recourse  to  such  arguments  of  fact  as  present 
themselves  to  the  mind,  that  Humanity  will  henceforth  find  itself 
more  and  more  confronted  by  this  inflexible  dilemma:  liberty  of 
international  commerce,  or  conflicts  of  increasing  gravity  between 
the  most  advanced  and  powerful  peoples. 

i.    THE  ECONOMIC  FUNDAMENTALS  OF  INTER- 
NATIONAL MORALITY 

The  economic  interests  of  men  are  their  primordial  interests. 
Their  economic  relations  are  their  fundamental  relations.  It 
is  so  in  the  life  of  individuals  and  of  groups  within  national  collec- 
tivities. It  is  equally  so  in  the  life  of  nations  in  the  international 
society.  Economics  are  necessarily  at  the  base  of  all  politics. 
National  economic  policy  is  the  fundamental  national  policy. 
International  economic  policy  is  the  fundamental  international 
policy. 

All  politics  must  be  inspired  by  morals,  and  these  themselves 
cannot  disregard  the  economic  foundation.  Fanciful  ideas  and 

1  November,  1915.  Journal  des  Economistes.  Translated  and  pub- 
lished, with  an  introduction  by  the  Right  Hon.  Lord  Courtney  of  Pen  with,  by 
George  Allen  and  Unwin,  London. 

33 


morals  engender  fanciful  politics.  Sound  and  positive  politics 
cannot  make  headway  except  by  the  principles  of  sound  and 
positive  morals.  These  principles  are  derived  from  the  very 
nature  and  necessity  of  things.  Sound  and  positive  morals 
are  natural  morals.  Now  natural  morals  are  prmordially  and 
primarily  those  which  manifest  themselves  in  the  economic 
relations  of  men,  resulting  in  the  satisfaction  of  their  physical 
and  vital  needs:  for  the  mind  of  man  cannot  be  free  and  his 
intellectual  faculties  and  higher  aspirations  cannot  expand  unless 
these  needs  are  satisfied.  "Economic  morality"  appears  as 
fundamental  to  all  activities  and  relations — individual,  social, 
national,  and  international.  It  is  the  positive  and  essential 
morality  and  the  indispensable  condition  of  harmony  in  private 
and  in  political  intercourse. 

To  bring  into  line  harmonious  relations  of  peoples  interna- 
tional politics  should  be  inspired  by  international  economic 
morals,  manifested  by  the  practice  of  justice  in  the  economic 
relations  of  peoples — that  is  to  say,  in  the  political  administration 
of  international  economic  interests.  It  has  always  been  so,  and 
will  be  more  and  more  so  with  the  increasing  advance  of  physical 
sciences  and  technical  arts,  as  well  as  of  industries,  commerce  and 
means  of  communication  —  advances  which  tend  to  render  eco- 
nomic interests  of  peoples  more  and  more  interdependent  and 
unified. 

2.    INTERNATIONAL  ECONOMIC  JUSTICE 

What  is  justice?  What  must  be  its  characteristic  in  the 
administration  of  international  economic  interests? 

Justice,  in  itself,  is  considered  as  undefinable.  This,  we 
think,  is  because  its  definition  has  always  been  sought  in  the 
ideal  or  the  abstract.  Let  us  seek  it  in  the  nature  of  things. 

In  order  to  be  successful,  first  in  conceiving,  and  secondly 
in  defining  justice  in  its  essence,  it  is  necessary  to  begin  by  in- 
quiring what  was  its  origin  among  men.  Now,  the  conception  of 
justice  cannot  have  entered  and  gradually  taken  shape  in  the 
human  brain  until  men  came  into  a  relationship  other  than  that  of 
force — that  is  to  say,  until  the  dependence  of  man  on  his  fellow 
began  to  be  satisfied  by  exchange  of  things  and  services.  The 
origin  of  the  sentiment  and  notion  of  justice  in  human  intercourse 
lies  in  the  natural  and  divine  phenomenon  of  division  of  labor 
and  exchange  of  products  and  services.  Justice  was  born  of  the 
necessity  of  evaluating  things  and  services  that  had  to  be  more 

34 


or  less  freely  exchanged  and  of  accepting  their  approximate 
equivalent.  As  division  of  labor,  as  well  as  exchange  of  things 
and  of  intellectual  and  moral  services,  have  become  more  complex 
and  free,  so  have  the  sentiment  and  conception  of  justice  been 
developed,  perfected,  and  raised.  Justice  is  directly  functional 
to  freedom  of  labor  and  exchange.  Natural  law  and  positive 
morals  have  as  origin,  and  will  keep  as  fundamental  principle, 
the  freedom  of  rendering  mutual  services  by  labor  and  exchange. 
The  primordial  liberty  of  exchanging  mutual  services  (capable, 
under  the  diverse  forms  of  co-operation  and  solidarity,  of  carrying 
in  its  train  the  freeing  of  man  from  all  subjection  and  oppression 
by  man),  remains  the  essential  criterion  of  justice  in  human 
relations. 

Justice  in  the  administration  of  international  interests  must 
be  essentially  characterized  by  freedom  in  all  relations  of  exchange 
between  peoples. 

Division  of  labor  and  exchange  is  the  origin  and  the  means  of 
all  economic  progress.  The  moral  importance  of  this  phenomenon 
is  not  secondary  to  its  economic  importance.  The  necessary  and 
sufficient  foundation  of  harmonious  intercourse  is  furnished  by 
freedom  to  produce  and  to  render  mutual  services.  It  is  so  within 
the  nation;  it  will  be  equally  so  between  nations.  Why  do 
individuals  of  a  nation,  in  the  main,  live  at  peace  with  each  other 
without  the  need  of  intervention  of  legal  force?  The  primary 
reason  is  that  between  these  individuals  there  operates  a  natural 
rule  of  justice  and  morality.  Of  what  does  this  rule  essentially 
consist?  It  consists  of  recognition  of  the  liberty  of  each  and 
every  citizen  to  work  and  thereby  to  render  services  (material, 
intellectual,  moral,  religious)  to  others,  as  well  as  to  be  the  recip- 
ients of  such  services — that  is  to  say,  it  consists  of  recognition  of 
freedom  to  produce  and  to  exchange.  (Assuming  that  the 
individuals  comprising  a  nation  systematically  created  obstacles 
to  this  freedom  of  production  and  exchange  between  themselves, 
would  not  the  inevitable  and  immediate  result  be  profound 
discord  and  conflict?) 

What  is  true  of  individual  relations  within  a  nation  is  also 
true  of  the  individual  relations  of  men  of  one  nation  with  those 
of  others,  and  of  the  collective  or  political  relationship  of  the 
nations  themselves. 

The  first  and  fundamental  manifestation  of  justice  and 
morality  in  relationship  is  freedom  to  exchange  material  things 
necessary  to  physical  needs.  Moreover  material  interests  repre- 

35 


sented  by  industries  and  commerce  have  hitherto  furnished  the 
only  positive  domain  of  international  relationship,  and  offer 
therefore  the  only  possible  basis  of  a  positive  international  justice 
and  morality.  Psychological,  that  is  to  say,  intellectual  and 
moral,  interests  could  not  have  a  beneficent  dominating  importance 
and  influence  in  international  politics  so  long  as  the  fundamental 
material  interests — of  which  the  administration  is  much  less 
complicated — do  not  benefit  by  an  international  policy  responding 
to  morality  and  justice. l 

It  is  the  primary  and  fundamental  economic  relations, 
exercised  under  a  regime  of  liberty  and  justice  within  the  nation — 
and  not  the  power  of  the  State — which,  in  permitting  unlimited 
development  of  common  material  interests,  form  the  real,  concrete 
solid  substratum  of  the  moral,  judicial,  and  political  unity  of 
nations.  Similar  relations  of  liberty  and  justice  instituted  between 
peoples  will  be  the  means  of  providing  the  same  indispensable 
substratum  and  of  assuring  the  same  progress  toward  unity  in 
the  international  order. 

The  politics  of  peoples  adequately  adjusted  to  the  natural 
conditions  of  their  harmonious  intercourse  will  be  those  which, 
inspired  by  international  economic  justice  and  morality,  establish 
freedom  of  industries  and  commerce  in  international  society.2 

xlt  may  be  well  to  note  here  that  material  exchanges  are  indispensable 
to  intellectual  and  moral  exchanges,  because  the  latter  necessitates  a  material 
support  (paper,  raw  material,  money,  or  personal  human  presence).  Suppres- 
sion of  physical  exchanges  and  communications  would  bring  in  its  train  sup- 
pression of  psychical  services  and  exchanges.  International  tolerance  applied 
to  either  has  necessarily  been  accompanied  by  tolerance  to  the  other.  They 
have  assisted  one  another  in  the  process  of  civilization.  Hindrance  to  material 
exchange  is  brought  about  by  dangerous  minds  capable,  for  their  own  ends, 
of  lending  friendly  support  to  the  most  reactionary  measures.  Here  intoler- 
ance is  ready  to  serve  intolerance,  favoring  exclusion,  isolation,  tyranny,  and 
provoking  interior  and  exterior  conflicts. 

2We  do  not  believe  it  is  necessary  to  enlarge  here  on  many  economic 
considerations  of  the  merits  of  Free  Trade  and  of  the  defects  of  Protectionism. 

To  imagine  that  by  encircling  a  country  with  barriers  and  by  isolating 
it  from  the  rest  of  the  world  it  becomes  richer;  to  believe  that  it  is  in  the 
interests  of  a  country  to  produce  itself,  even  if  with  great  difficulty  and  at 
great  cost,  those  things  which  are  necessary  to  it,  and  which  the  foreigner 
produces  easily  and  offers  cheaply;  to  suppress  the  fact  that  products  are 
exchanged  for  products,  and  that  imports  are  regulated  by  exports;  not  to 
understand  that  when  merchants  of  a  country  are  enabled  to  import  goods  from 
other  countries  it  is  because  their  country  produces  advantageously  mer- 
chandise to  export  and  exchange  for  the  equally  advantageously  produced 
goods  of  other  countries:  that  consequently  international  commerce  is  inter- 
national exchange  of  natural  advantages  and  services;  not  to  see  that  the 

36 


3.     INTERNATIONAL  LAW 

All  human  progress,  material,  intellectual  and  moral,  is 
derived  directly  or  indirectly  from  the  division  of  labor  and 
exchange.  If  the  natural  law  of  division  of  labor  and  exchange 
ceased  to  operate,  humanity  would  return  to  its  most  primitive 
stage  as  soon  as  the  accumulated  stores  of  human  requisites  were 
exhausted  It  is  as  impossible  to  imagine  society  without  this 

additional  profits  obtained  by  the  protected  industries  of  a  country  are  legal 
spoliation  of  the  consumers  of  that  country  and  a  premium  to  incompetence 
and  to  industrial  parasitism  resulting  in  unnecessary  labor  of  the  working 
classes  and  in  privation  of  the  consuming  masses:  in  truth,  to  imagine,  to 
ignore,  or  not  to  understand  all  this,  presupposes  lack  of  economic  knowledge 
which  we  are  convinced  cannot  be  attributed  to  our  readers. 

To  deny  the  benefits  of  international  exchange — and  consequently  of 
free  exchange — is,  in  fact,  to  deny  the  advantages  of  division  of  labor  and 
the  increase  of  productiveness  resulting  therefrom.  It  is,  therefore,  to  deny 
that  which  is  evident.  A  country  which  determines  to  be  self-supporting 
must  resign  itself  to  a  inferior  productivity  and  standard  of  wealth.  If 
such  a  country  continues  to  prosper,  it  will  be  because  of  natural  advantages, 
because  of  high  intelligence  and  labor  energy  of  its  inhabitants,  because  of 
interior  free  exchange  and  despite  its  efforts  to  be  self-sustaining. 

If  it  be  advantageous  to  a  country  to  be  self-sustaining,  why  not  apply 
the  same  principle  to  each  region,  province,  county,  village?  A  country  is 
rich  by  the  quantity,  quality,  cheapness  and  variety  of  articles  of  consumption 
and  things  at  the  disposal  of  its  inhabitants,  whatever  may  be  the  origin  of 
these  things — home  soil  and  labor  productions,  or  foreign  productions  got  by 
exchange  with  home  products.  The  resolve  of  a  country  to  produce  them 
itself  evidently  can  be  only  an  obstacle. 

It  is  moreover  untrue  that  Protection  preventing  importation  and 
making  for  a  self-sustained  people  is  a  source  of  higher  wages  and  a  factor 
of  a  higher  standard  of  living;  on  the  contrary,  Protection  tends  to  lower 
both,  and  it  is  free  exchange  only  that  can  have  such  favorable  results.  For, 
all  imported  things  are  paid  for  by  equal  values  of  exported  things;  therefore, 
to  begin  with,  importation  does  not  and  cannot  reduce  home  production, 
demand  of  labor  and  wages.  But,  prevention  of  importation  through  pro- 
tective tariffs  narrows  markets  and  causes  the  artificial  establishment  and 
parasitical  prosperity  of  industries,  these  taking  the  place  of  natural  industries 
for  which,  if  free,  the  possibilities  and  prospects  of  development  would  be 
far  greater  than  those  of  the  protected  and  artificial  industries;  therefore 
tariffs  and  self-sustaining  system  make  for  lower,  whereas  free  trade  makes 
for  higher  home  production,  demand  of  labor  and  wages.  The  cost  of  life 
being  necessarily  higher  under  the  tariff  regime,  we  are  forced  to  admit  that 
Protection  tends  to  reduce  both  wages  and  standard  of  life  (of  the  workmen) 
whereas  free  trade  tends  to  increase  both  of  them. 

Is  it  necessary  to  add  that  Protectionist  customs  duties  represent  the 
worst  and  most  exhausting  method  of  raising  revenue  for  the  state?  Home 
producers  of  articles  taxed  are  thereby  enabled  to  extort  from  the  general 

37 


natural  phenomenon  as  the  phenomenon  without  society.  It  is 
the  original  social  phenomenon,  and  will  never  cease  to  be  funda- 
mental to  civilization.  Every  obstacle  to  its  accomplishment  is 
an  obstacle  to  progress.  Except  by  suffering  themselves  and 
imposing  suffering  on  others,  peoples  cannot  set  up  against  it 
the  obstacle  of  political  frontiers.  By  nature,  logic  and  force  of 
things  social  order,  international  order  and  civilization  are  domin- 
ated by  a  law  of  economic  liberty  and  justice. 

body  of  consumers  a  sum  which  may  be  many  times  larger  than  any  possible 
revenue  which  would  accrue  to  the  state.  The  higher  the  customs  duties 
the  less  the  state  receives  (by  reason  of  diminishing  volume  of  importation), 
and  the  more  the  tax  levied  by  manufactures  on  consumers  is  raised  (by 
raising  the  prices  of  their  products)  the  more  also  by  reason  of  general  dearness 
will  the  expenses  of  the  state  suffer  increase  even  to  the  extent  of  absorbing 
the  greatest  part  of  receipts  from  customs.  Attempts  to  create  important 
revenues  by  means  of  Protectionist  customs  are  condemned  to  failure.  They 
will  end  in  revolution  or  war — or  in  both. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  special  object  of  this  study  it  is  useful 
to  observe  further: 

1.  Protectionist   duties    (actively  assisting   syndicates,   cartels,   and 

trusts  formed  to  raise  selling  prices  to  their  maximum  by 
limiting  production,  with  the  inevitable  consequence  that  wages 
are  reduced  to  a  minimum),  multiply  with  abuse  and  excess 
capital  in  the  hands  of  the  exploiters  and  financiers  of  industry, 
whilst  weakening  the  nation's  power  of  purchase  and  consumption 
and  thus  limiting  the  possibilities  of  expansion  of  home  industries. 
In  order  to  find  remunerative  employment  for  such  capital  these 
exploiters  are  then  obliged  to  seek  scope  for  it  energetically  in  new 
countries.  Hence  the  need  for  excessive  colonial  expansion  by 
old  countries. 

2.  On  Protectionism  depends  the  industrial  and  commercial  system 

known  as  "dumping,"  consisting  in  selling  exteriorly  at  a  low 
price  (sometimes  even  below  cost)  by  sacrificing  a  portion  of 
excessive  profits  levied  in  the  home  market.  By  means  of 
special  reductions  of  transport  rates  and  by  grants  of  export 
bounties,  the  whole  levied  on  customs  receipts — that  is  to  say,  on 
the  nation's  consumers — states  acquiesce  in  that  system  of  inter- 
national competition,  at  once  immoral,  aggressive,  warlike. 

3.  Lastly,  let  us   observe    that   exchange  and  division  of  labor  are 

necessary  factors  in  the  increasing  possibilities  of  production 
and  consumption  of  both  exchangers.  The  international  action 
of  Protectionism  is  not  confined  to  hampering  exchange.  It 
further,  by  hampering  international  division  of  labor,  lessens 
the  general  productiveness  and  the  power  of  consumption  of 
humanity.  The  injustice  and  immorality  of  a  nation  putting 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  free  exchanges  lies  not  alone  in  the 
privation  and  suffering  it  causes  to  itself,  but  also,  and  above 
all,  in  the  like  evils  it  thereby  imposes  on  foreign  peoples. 

38 


It  is  obvious  that  a  code  of  judicial  relationships  of  peoples 
cannot  obviously  suppress  the  natural  necessity  attaching  to 
the  phenomenon  of  division  of  labor  and  exchange  in  international 
intercourse:  international  law  cannot  with  impunity  ignore 
international  justice  and  disown  primordial  international  morals 
in  their  most  essential  manifestation.  Every  effort  in  the  direction 
of  installing  an  international  law  under  the  regime  of  reciprocal 
economic  isolation  and  exclusion  of  peoples  is  doomed  to  failure, 
proceeding  as  it  does  from  opposition  to  the  natural  ways  and 
means  of  fulfillment  of  the  Supreme  Will  with  respect  to  harmony 
and  progress.  The  possibility  of  codifying  the  conditions  of 
international  intercourse  in  sovereign  and  definite  laws  rests 
fundamentally  on  international  economic  co-operation,  that  is 
to  say,  on  international  liberty  of  industries  and  commerce.  On 
this  concrete  liberty  and  justice  the  principles  of  moral  liberty 
and  superior  justice,  which  it  is  the  function  of  international  law 
to  consecrate,  will  be  supported  and  elevated. 

International  law  must  be  founded  on  natural  international 
justice,  signifying  international  economic  liberty;  failing  this,  it 
will  remain  a  precarious  and  sterile  doctrine.  International 
treaties  will  be  without  strength,  value,  stability. 

Moreover,  there  cannot  be  a  true  written  law,  save  that 
which  derives  its  motive  and  value  from  a  natural  law.  There 
will  never  be  a  solid  and  stable  international  law  except  it  be  the 
outcome  of  a  natural  international  law.  If  the  constitution  of 
humanity  in  national  groups  is  a  natural  fact,  there  must  neces- 
sarily exist  a  natural  international  law.  It  is  only  a  question  of 
discovering  it. 

Certainly  one  cannot  conceive  the  operation  of  a  natural  law 
except  between  entities — ndividuals  or  groups — whose  relations 
are  natural;  it  is,  therefore,  only  between  nations  enjoying  natural 
relations  that  there  can  be  a  natural  international  law;  and  it  is 
economic  relations  which,  being  fundamental,  must  above  all 
and  by  sheer  necessity  be  natural. 

Now,  those  fundamental  relations  between  peoples  which 
exclude  and  isolate  each  other  are  artificial:  the  diversity  with 
which  riches  are  scattered  in  the  different  regions  of  the  globe, 
in  such  fashion  that  every  nation  has  in  abundance,  and  sometimes 
even  in  super-abundance,  some  things  and  natural  advantages  of 
which  others  have  an  insufficiency  or  lack  totally,  and  the  natural 
solidarity  which  results  therefrom — does  this  not  demonstrate 
that  it  is  in  the  very  necessity  of  the  natural  plan  of  progress  that 

39 


peoples  should  render  mutual  services  by  exchange?  The  accom- 
plishment of  the  phenomenon  of  division  of  labor  and  exchange 
cannot  be  stayed  or  hindered  "naturally"  by  political  frontiers. 
Must  not  human  laws  limit  themselves  to  sanctioning  "  relations 
having  their  origin  in  the  nature  of  things?"  The  establishment 
of  artificial  economic  frontiers  (political  frontiers  being  necessarily 
justified  by  the  fact  of  nationalities)  is  an  attack  against  natural 
international  order  and  law,  and  will  be  penalized  by  the  im- 
possibility of  building  up  between  peoples  a  definite  and  sovereign 
law  capable  of  assuring  to  them  mutual  harmony  and  peace.  The 
international  judicial  edifice  will  crack  and  crumble  if  not  built 
on  the  true,  concrete  foundation  of  unified  economic  interests  of 
peoples  living  under  the  regime  of  the  natural  international  law 
of  freedom  of  exchange. 

4.    THE  "LAWS  OF  CIVILIZED  WARFARE." 

War  is  the  suppression  between  peoples  of  the  regime  of  law, 
for  which  is  substituted  the  regime  of  force — in  which  regime 
arbitrariness  will,  in  fact,  only  be  limited  by  considerations  of 
opportuneness  and  interest  entirely  foreign  to  right,  or  by  fear 
of  reprisals  by  the  adverse  force.  How  can  one  seriously  speak 
of  a  regime  of  rights  and  humanitarian  conventions  between 
peoples  who  mutually  massacre  the  flower  of  their  humanity, 
and  whose  objective  is  annihilation  of  one  by  the  other?  Between 
them  the  solus  populi  suprema  lex  will  fatally  finish  by  being 
applied  in  its  most  tragic  and  absolute  form  without  any  con- 
sideration of  rights,  laws,  or  conventions.  The  "law  of  war"  is 
an  entirely  artificial  and  contradictory  conception. 

As  to  the  expression  "civilized  warfare,"  it  is  void  of  reason 
and  even  of  sense.  By  unloosing  the  organized  brute  forces  of 
peoples,  by  supreme  manifestation  of  human  violence,  war  assumes 
the  simplest  and  harshest  characteristics  of  barbarism.  To 
pretend  to  civilize  warfare  is  nothing  less  than  to  pretend  to 
civilize  that  which  suppresses  civilization.  Future  generations 
will  indeed  wonder  that  jurists  of  the  nineteenth  and  of  the 
twentieth  century  should  have  resuscitated  ancient  theories  in 
order  to  "legalize"  international  destruction  and  to  "civilize" 
human  interslaughter  in  the  name  of  "rights  of  peoples. " x 

*In  the  term  "civilized  warfare"  may  be  often  implied  the  significa- 
tion of  "war  between  civilized  nations."  We  question  whether  nations 
which  have  not  yet  arrived  at  the  stage  of  suppressing  war  have  the  right 
to  call  themselves  civilized. 

40 


There  cannot  be  found  a  more  peremptory  and  striking  proof 
of  the  impossibility  of  civilizing  warfare  than  that  which  is  offered 
by  the  "War  Manuals"  of  the  nations  who  look  upon  war  as  an 
honorable  and  indeed  civilizing — if  not  "  educative  " — undertaking. 
Far  from  it  being  to  their  interest  to  discredit  war,  these  nations 
would,  were  it  possible,  invest  it  with  a  character  of  nobility; 
yet  these  selfsame  nations  make  its  code  the  most  brutal  and 
demoralizing.  Truly  herein  lies  war's  logic.  Employment  of 
the  most  brutal  and  treacherous  apparatus,  of  the  most  cowardly 
tactics,  recourse  to  the  most  perfidious  stratagems  and  means  of 
success,  whatever  they  may  be,  such  are  and  such  will  be  more 
and  more  not  only  the  art  of  war  but  also  the  only  possible  "moral 
of  war."  For,  if  war  never  has  been  a  sport  or  tournament,  it 
has  now  even  ceased  to  be  a  kind  of  duel,  such  as  was  fought 
between  armies,  knights  and  kings  in  order  to  decide  questions 
of  relative  importance:  War  has  developed  into  a  "to  be  or 
not  to  be"  between  peoples.  Such  is  the  result  of  a  civilization 
which,  not  having  known  (for  reasons  to  be  explained)  the  com- 
pensation of  equilibrium  of  the  progress  of  philosophy  and  of 
utilitarianism,  has  been  incapable  of  establishing  the  conditions 
nautral  to  peace. 

Wars  will  become  more  pitiless,  more  ruinous  in  men  and 
things,  and  more  general,  in  proportion  to  the  progress  of  exact 
sciences,  technical  arts  and  industries,  in  proportion  also  to  the 
development  of  the  means  of  communication  and  of  the  mutual 
needs  of  peoples.  It  is  only  by  suppressing  war  by  a  corresponding 
progress  of  economic  and  political  philosophy  and  international 
ethics  that  men  will  succeed  in  escaping  the  fatally  increasing 
horrors  and  calamities  of  wars. 

The  endeavors  to  reintroduce  "laws  of  chivalry,"  or  simply 
to  introduce  more  "legality"  into  wars,  cannot  be  justified  except 
by  men  who  are  dominated  either  by  the  idea  of  nobility  of  arms 
and  military  power  or  by  the  presumption  of  the  natural  inevi- 
tableness  of  periodic  encounters  and  intermassacring  of  peoples. 
Such  endeavors  bear  testimony  to  intellectual  and  moral  inferiority. 
In  aiming  to  render  wars  milder  and  more  supportable  (if  not  even 
sympathetic),  these  efforts,  like  all  those  which  proceed  from 
sentiment  and  not  from  reason,  are  humanitarian  in  inspiration, 
but  would  become  anti-humanitarian  in  result.  The  question 


is,  not  to  surround  war  with  a  halo,  nor  to  palliate  its  secondary 
and  indirect  effects,  but  to  discover,  to  loathe,  and  to  suppress  its 
causes,  and  so  make  possible  the  suppression  of  war  itself. 
Moreover  we  recall  or  suggest  that: 

1.  All  contracts  or  treaties  in  which  the  contracting  parties 

make  engagements  compromising  their  existence  are 
immoral  and  consequently  void; 

2.  All  conventions  regularizing  violence  and  slaughter  are  a 

defiance  of  morality,  and  are  therefore  judicial  non- 
sense— 

and  without  dwelling  here  upon  these  decisive  arguments  of 
judicial  principle,1  we  conclude  that  "laws  of  war"  are  institutions 
without  foundation,  the  chimerical  products  of  human  will  solely. 
If  it  were  possible  to  have  a  "law  of  war, "  it  could  derive  its  origin 
and  force  only  from  the  "natural  law  of  war,"  which  in  his  "De 
Jure  Belli  et  Pacis"  Hugo  Grotius  defines  as  follows: 

"Omnia  licere  in  bello  qua  necessaria  sunt  adfinem  belli."2 

The  fight  for  survival  is  the  natural  law  of  all  beings  deprived 
of  morals;  it  remains  the  natural  law  of  individuals  and  collec- 
tivities in  those  surroundings  where  an  inadequate  morality 
obtains — a  state  of  things  for  which  by  reason  of  natural  solidarity, 
responsibility  is  forced  on  all.  War  is,  therefore,  if  not  a  criminal 
or  immoral  act,  at  least  a  phenomenon  caused  by  "  a-morality , " 
signifying  non-morality — that  is  to  say,  by  ignorance  or  inadequate 
knowledge  of  the  moral  laws  which  should  prevail  in  international 
relations.  The  wills  and  conventions  of  men  can  never  make 
moral  that  which  is  immoral  or  "amoral."  Logic  and  force  of 
things  will  ever  impede  the  introduction  therein  of  a — so  to 
speak — false  morality.  This  only  is  given  to  men:  to  substitute 
by  study,  knowledge,  and  practice  of  morality,  the  moral  state 
of  things  for  the  "amoral"  state.  Such  are  logic  and  just  law. 
International  morals  and  laws  of  war  will  ever  be  hollow  concep- 

*We  should  add,  thirdly:  All  contracts,  international  or  otherwise, 
which  do  not  stipulate  duration  and  term  are,  as  we  have  seen,  in  fact,  null. 
As  they  cannot  be  everlasting  or  binding  by  perpetual  title,  they  can  be 
denounced  at  any  moment  by  one  or  other  of  the  contracting  parties.  A 
contract  without  stipulation  of  duration  presupposes  the  rebus  sic  stantibus. 
Perennial  regime  is  that  of  complete  contractual  instability. 

2The  distinction  between  combatants  and  non-combatants  which  is 
a  leitmotiv  of  the  "laws  of  war"  does  not  rest  on  any  foundation  of  truth — 
save  where  children  are  concerned — because  everybody,  man  or  woman, 
directly  or  indirectly,  participates  or  helps  in  furthering  war.  As  to  children, 
it  stands  to  reason  that  their  presence  cannot  be  invoked  as  a  protective 

42 


tions  and  sterile  script.  There  can  only  be  international  laws  and 
morals  of  Peace. l 

5.    DISARMAMENT  AND  " FREEDOM  OF  THE  SEAS" 

Armaments  and  the  competition  in  them  do  not  cause 
wars.  They  are  but  the  consequences  of  the  danger  of  war — 
that  is  to  say,  of  international  "  amorality . "  It  is  evident  that 
their  disappearance  will  only  be  made  possible  by  international 
security — in  other  words,  by  the  intervention  of  international 
morality. 

Man  in  danger  and  unprotected  can  only  arm  himself.  It 
is  the  same  with  nations.  Surround  an  individual  with  the 
blessings  of  security  and  he  will  desire  nothing  so  much  as  to  drop 
his  weapon;  soon  he  will  let  it  rust;  he  will  even  end  by  not  know- 
ing where  to  find  it.  The  disarmament  of  nations  can  only  come 
about  in  the  same  way — voluntarily,  gradually,  as  a  natural  result 
of  an  increased  feeling  of  international  security.  In  proportion 
to  advancement  in  the  direction  of  industrial  civilization,  based 
on  co-operation  and  exchange,  this  feeling  will  more  and  more 
merge  itself  into  that  of  stability  in  international  economic 
relations — stability  which  identifies  itself  with  the  freedom  of 
these  relations.  To  be  truly  desirable  and  final,  disarmament  can 
and  must  come  about  only  as  the  result  and  the  blessed  gift  of 
the  advent  of  international  economic  liberty,  justice  and  morality. 

shield  (Is  this  done  in  the  case  of  a  besieged  town?  Why  should  it  be  done 
in  the  case  of  a  besieged  country,  as  is  every  country  at  war?)  The  true 
protection  of  the  little  ones  is  the  morality  of  their  elders.  There  lies  true  duty 
in  respect  to  them. 

JThe  Editor  of  the  Journal  des  Economises  points  out  that  in  his  "  A  B  C, 
ou  Dialogue  entre  ABC,"  Voltaire  expresses  on  the  "laws  of  war"  (eleventh 
Lecture)  opinions  extremely  similar  to  those  here  enunciated.  A  (Voltaire) 
remarks  at  the  outset  of  the  Dialogue: — 

"The  right  of  Peace  I  understand  well  enough:  it  is  to  keep  one's 
word  and  allow  Humanity  to  enjoy  the  rights  of  Nature;  but  as  to  the  right 
of  War,  I  do  not  know  what  it  is.  The  law  of  murder  seems  to  me  strange 
and  fanciful.  We  shall  soon  see  jurisprudence  emanating  from  highway 
robbers." 

On  the  subject  of  the  "laws  of  war"  the  author  ventures  to  suggest  that 
were  any  such  laws  feasible,  one  only  would  be  advisable  and  useful,  viz. 
an  international  agreement  to  employ  as  combatants  only  those  men  who 
are  over  forty-five  years  of  age.  This  would  be  a  double  benefit,  inasmuch  as 
most  of  the  useful  and  stronger  men  would  be  spared,  and  most  of  the  unuseful 
and  detrimental  would  be  periodically  swept  away.  But  it  is  nearly  certain 
that  with  such  a  law  operating  there  would  be  no  more  war. 

We  are  at  present  witnessing  the  complete  failure  of  the  "Nestors." 

43 


Navalism  has  the  same  cause  as  militarism:  international 
insecurity.  It  will  not  disappear  save  by  means  of  international 
morality.  Ablata  causa,  tollitur  ejfectus.  Gradual  disarmament 
on  land  will  then  be  accompanied  by  gradual  disarmament  on 
sea.  Naval  disarmament  and  freedom  of  the  seas  will  be  natural 
consequences  of  liberty  of  international  commerce.  They  are 
problems  which  will  never  be  solved  if  considered  apart  from 
the  general  problem  of  permanent  peace. 

Freedom  of  the  seas  shall  not  be  liberty  of  maritime  com- 
merce and  communications  in  times  of  war  guaranteed  by  agree- 
ments between  nations.  How  curious  and  contradictory  is  the 
conception  that  enterprises  of  war  should  by  common  agreement 
be  favored  and  preparation  therefore  be  given  countenance! 
Vain  effort,  indeed,  that  would  seek  to  deduce  the  principle  of 
liberty  and  security  of  the  " nations'  highway"  from  a  morality 
of  war!  The  only  possible  morality  of  war  is  that  seas  as  well 
as  lands  must  belong  to  those  who  are  capable  of  seizing  them  by 
force  and  of  maintaining  their  domination  by  the  same  means, 
as  pirates  and  tyrants  do — that  is  to  say:  the  "morality  of  war" 
can  only  be  the  " morality  of  international  brigandage." 

From  such  a  state  of  things  neutral  peoples  must  legitimately 
suffer;  no  human  efforts  and  conventions  whatever  will  prevail 
against  the  superior  law  of  natural  solidarity,  which  condemns 
all  men  alike  to  suffer  from  the  failure  of  progress  wherever  it 
takes  place — a  just  law  indeed,  since  it  tends  to  promote  rapid 
and  general  progress,  and  since  that  failure  has  proved  that  no 
nation  has  given  to  others  a  sufficiently  constant  and  powerful 
example  of  progressive  international  morality.  Without  doubt, 
certain  great  Protectionist  non-belligerent  nations  have  a  con- 
siderable, even  a  very  large,  share  of  direct  and  active  responsibility 
in  the  conservation  of  international  immorality.1 

1This  was  written  in  the  year  1915,  long  before  the  entry  into  the  war  of 
the  greatest  "Protectionist  non-belligerent  nation." 

ON  NEUTRALITY :  There  is  only  one  true  neutrality— that  in  which 
real  neutrals  cease  all  relations  of  trade  with  all  belligerents  and  with  all 
those  themselves  calling  neutrals  who  do  not  adopt  the  same  rule  of  true 
neutrality.  For,  to  sell  to  belligerents  food,  clothing,  munition,  is  to  be 
co-operator  to  war  and  half  belligerent.  Such  neutrality,  consisting  in  helping 
and  profiting  by  the  mutual  destruction  of  others  is  immoral — whereas  actual 
belligerency  may  be  a  non-directly  deserved  catastrophe  or,  in  certain  cases, 
may  have  appeared  as  a  high  duty. 

The  present-day  conception  of  neutrality  (the  only  one  which  a  leader 
is  enabled  to  follow  in  practice;  for,  no  responsible  statesman  can  go  far  ahead 
of  his  time,  and  disregard  the  written  law)  is  supported  by  arguments  of 

44 


Surely,  the  seas  were  bestowed  no  more  than  the  lands,  in 
fact  rather  less  than  the  latter,  on  any  particular  nations:  they 
have  been  given  by  God  and  Nature  to  humanity  as  a  whole, 
with  the  object  of  an  ever-increasing  intercourse  and  co-operation 
of  all  peoples  of  the  earth,  in  order  that  the  accomplishment  of 
human  works  of  progress,  justice  and  peace  may  be  ensured 
universally  together  with  the  spiritual  Finalities,  of  which  these 
human  works  are  the  means.  Therefore,  true  and  final  freedom 
of  the  seas  will  not  provide  new  facilities  and  new  food  for  war:  it 
will  be  the  reward  to  Humanity  for  the  attainment  by  all  nations 
to  the  natural  morality  of  peace  arising  out  of  international  economic 
liberty  and  justice. 

For  more  than  a  century  the  seas  have  been  permamently 
open  to  the  trade  of  nations  in  times  of  peace.  The  fact  strikingly 
confirms  the  theory  according  to  which  the  problem  of  the  real 
freedom  of  the  seas  is  identical  with  that  of  permanent  peace,  and 
finds  its  best  solution — its  only  one — in  the  policy  of  international 
commercial  liberty  (which  was  that  of  the  greatest  naval  power.) 

Certainly,  humanity  has  no  interest  in  having  the  "  freedom 
of  the  seas"  assured  to — nor  the  domination  of  the  seas  exercised 
by — imperialist,  conquering,  and  Protectionist  nations.  On 
the  contrary,  there  is  no  more  important  interest  than  the  pre- 
vention of  such  domination  and  " freedom."  There  is  therefore 
clear  evidence  that  this  question  can  not  be  solved,  justly,  com- 
pletely, definitively,  except  by  means  of  liberty  of  international 
trade.  Liberty  of  trade  cannot  be  the  consequence  of  "freedom 
of  the  seas;"  it  must  be  its  means,  its  ejfective  cause. 

It  is  also  as  clear  as  it  is  rational  that  naval  disarmament 
and  true  freedom  of  the  seas  must  depend  on  an  equitable  adjust. 

present-day  international  law  and  is  identified  with  freedom  of  commerce 
and  freedom  of  the  seas.  But  all  our  ideas  on  these  issues  will  be  repudiated 
by  a  perhaps  near  future,  and  they  will  be  looked  upon  as  having  been  insults 
to  moral  law,  to  respectable  commerce  and  to  holy  freedom. 

Law,  commerce,  freedom  appertain  to  the  regime  of  peace — not  of  war. 

Moreover,  all  conceptions  whatever  of  "neutrality,"  active  or  passive, 
voluntary  or  imposed,  are  artificial  and  will  remain  inoperative  and  precarious 
in  presence  of  the  force  of  things  represented  by  natural  solidarity  of  nations, 
as  well  as  by  the  necessity  (against  which  nothing  ever  shall  prevail)  of  pro- 
viding for  the  physical  salvation  of  peoples  engaged  in  the  mortal  struggle 
of  modern  war. 

Neutrality,  even  "true  neutrality",  will  less  and  less  be  for  peaceful 
nations  a  refuge.  A  vigorous  co-operation  for  the  establishment  of  inter- 
national morality  and  security  will  be  for  such  nations  the  only  righteous, 
worthy  and  effective  attitude. 

45 


ment  of  colonial  ownership,  and  above  all  on  the  establishment  of 
the  regime  of  the  Open  Door,  or  at  least  of  equal  opportunities 
in  all  colonial  possessions,  present  and  future.  (The  logical 
corollary  of  this  being  ultimate  free  trade  between  the  Mother 
Countries.) 

Any  limitation  of  naval  armaments  must  necessarily  be 
accompanied  by  an  agreement  providing  for  international  guar- 
dianship of  the  seas.  And  we  propound  this  question:  Would  not 
such  an  agreement — which  might  be  a  first  result  of  the  dawn  of 
international  security  evolved  from  colonial  Free  Trade — be 
the  equivalent  of  freedom  and  neutralization  of  the  seas? 

Let  us  remark,  in  conclusion,  that  freedom  of  the  seas  neces- 
sarily implies  liberty  of  communications  between  lands  and  seas, 
and  also  liberty  of  ports.  By  recognition  o  this  principle  many 
difficult  questions  of  international  politics  could  be  solved  with 
extreme  ease  and  to  the  great  advantage  of  all  interested.1 
6.  DIPLOMACY  —  DEMOCRATIC  CONTROL  —  INTERNATIONAL 
ARBITRATION  AND  THE  "SUPERNATIONAL  GRAND  COUNCIL" 

There  is  nothing  more  morally  infamous  than  international 
policy  and  its  tool,  diplomacy.  Between  nations  "all  means 
hold  good,"  and  that  which  in  private  life  is  reprehensible  and 
even  criminal  recommends  itself  and  becomes  meritorious.  There 

1For  several  years  past  the  writer  has  scarcely  ceased  to  propound 
that  the  definitive  adoption  of  the  regime  of  the  Open  Door  (or  at  least  of 
equality  of  opportunities)  in  the  colonies,  present  and  future,  of  all  European 
nations,  furnished  the  only  means  of  avoiding  a  European  conflagration. 
He  still  considers  this  measure  as  the  only  one,  immediately  practicable, 
capable  of  powerfully  contributing  to  a  solution  of  the  present  crisis.  It 
must,  in  his  opinion,  be  the  intitial  consideration  of  any  Conference  called  to 
discuss  terms  of  peace.  When  adopted,  it  would  create  the  atmosphere  of 
goodwill  indispensable  to  the  examination,  with  some  prospect  of  agreement, 
of  the  remaining  numerous,  great  and  grave  questions  to  be  determined  by  a 
Peace  Conference. 

("La  Belgique  et  le  Congo, "  1908.  " La  Belgique  et  le  Libre  Echange, " 
1910.  "Pax  CEconomica,"  1913.  "Lettre  ouverte  a  M.  Woodrow  Wilson, 
President  des  Etats-Unis  d'Am&ique,"  October  1914.  "Un  autre  Aspect 
de  la  Question  Europ6enne  et  une  Solution,"  November  1914.) 

It  may  be  objected  that  present-day  colonial  trade  has  only  a  relative 
economic  importance;  nevertheless,  it  involves  all  the  value  and  importance  of 
a  principle,  and  it  is  on  the  subject  of  colonial  rights  that  the  injustice  of  privi- 
leges and  of  monopolies  following  on  conquest  is  most  bitterly  and  most 
legitimately  resented.  In  a  sky  hitherto  darkened  by  clouds  charged  with  the 
ignorance  and  injustice  of  most  peoples  and  their  governments,  the  advent  of 
colonial  free  trade  would  represent  the  dawn  of  international  truth  and 
justice. 

(We  should  note  that  in  a  convention  relative  to  colonial  commerce 

46 


jealousy,  distrust,  and  fear  culminate  and  triumph  in  treachery. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  overcome  one's  disgust  if  in  private  life 
one  were  obliged  to  employ  the  same  methods  as  are  necessary 
in  diplomacy. 

Why  is  this  so?  Only  because  action  in  international  policy 
is  exercised  in  the  direction  of  instituting  between  peoples  that 
regime  contrary  to  Nature,  logic,  and  the  force  of  things,  which  is 
characterized  by  the  spirit  of  conquest  and  Protectionism,  with  a 
view  to  isolation  and  reciprocal  exclusion  by  means  of  privileges 
and  monopolies,  thus  creating  antagonism  and  hostility;  whereas, 
obviously,  it  is  the  regime  distinguished  by  the  spirit  of  Free 
Trade  and  co-operation,  tending  towards  development  of  relations 
and  of  association,  bringing  in  its  train  goodwill  and  unity,  which 
conforms  to  the  general  interests  of  peoples  as  well  as  to  nature's 
justice,  morality,  and  Will.  Beneficent  Nature  refuses  to  recog- 
nize obstacles  which  men  oppose  to  co-operation  between  them- 
selves. For  this  reason,  while  these  obstacles  remain,  no  more  in 
peace-time  than  in  war-time  can  intercourse  between  the  states 
be  carried  on  by  means  other  than  those  which  being  anti-natural 
are  violent  and  immoral.  These  debased  methods  must  be  as 
artful  as  their  results  will  be  artificial.  With  deceit  under  the 
name  of  "diplomatic  skill,"  secrecy  becomes  the  essential  con- 
dition of  their  ephemeral  "successes."  Such  are  the  ways  and 
morals  of  most  statesmen  and  "great  politicians"  in  their  com- 

the  autonomous  colonies  of  the  British  Dominion  would  intervene  as  separate 
states.) 

Those  in  whose  hands  are  the  destinies  of  their  contemporaries — 
and  of  numerous  generations  to  follow — must  not  lose  sight  of  the  fact  that 
short  of  complete  destruction  of  one  of  the  two  actual  belligerent  parties 
(signifying  exhaustion  of  the  other,  and  the  probable  downfall  of  Europe) 
there  are  but  three  possible  solutions  by  way  of  arrangement: 

1.  Territorial  acquisitions. 

2.  Payment  of  war  indemnities. 

3.  Economic  concessions. 

It  being  undeniable  that  territorial  acquisitions  and  payments  of  in- 
demnities are  and  will  remain  unthinkable  except  as  results  of  total  defeat, 
there  eventually  remains  no  "arrangement"  possible  other  than  that  of 
economic  concessions. 

This  third  solution  of  the  European  question  is  the  only  one  possessing 
durable  character — that  is  to  say,  permitting  gradual  and  definite  disarm- 
ament, and  giving  some  hope  of  avoiding  revolution,  anarchy,  and  the  more 
or  less  early  renewal  of  a  war  more  terrible  and  grave  than  the  present  one,  a 
new  war  (claimed  as  one  of  liberation  and  justice)  which  we  should  inevitably 
bequeath  to  our  children. 

47 


binations  and  machinations  against  nature  and  the  force  of  things. 
What  poor  men,  what  little  men,  are  these  great  men !  Is  it  to  be 
wondered  at  that  their  imprudence  and  their  misconception  of 
those  natural  and  healthy  principles,  which  should  dominate  the 
relations  of  peoples,  create  an  international  situation  so  false  and 
arbitrary  that  peace  is  unceasingly  menaced,  and  make  for  inter- 
national conditions  so  incoherent  and  unstable,  because  artificial, 
that,  despite  the  desires  both  of  statesmen  and  of  peoples,  war 
breaks  out  almost  automatically  as  an  apparently  spontaneous 
explosion  evolves  from  conditions  combining  a  maximum  of 
energy  with  a  minimum  of  natural  stability? 

Suppose,  on  the  contrary,  that  the  utility  and  justice  of 
international  division  of  labor  and  exchange  became  recognized, 
and  free  international  co-operation  practised :  the  exterior  politics 
of  States  would  immediately  become  as  simple,  as  easy,  as  stable 
and  as  moral  as  the  most  healthy  relations  between  individuals 
can  be,  while  international  lying  and  knavery  would  be  rendered 
useless  and  "dipolmacy"  lose  its  raison  d'etre.  The  opprobrium 
of  diplomacy  is  only  the  reflection  of  the  ignominy  of  the  interna- 
tional policies  generally  practiced. 

An  alternative  is  suggested — the  control  of  international 
policy  by  democracy — that  is  to  say,  by  popular  suffrage.  Dem- 
ocracy is  as  incapable  of  this  as  a  simple  and  honest  man  would  be 
of  directing  the  affairs  of  a  "bucket  shop. "  Very  soon  democracy 
and  popular  suffrage  would  discredit  themselves.  Democratic 
control  could  ameliorate  nothing,  and  might  even  make  greatly 
worse  the  state  of  things  it  seeks  to  control,  if  it  did  not  commence  by 
demanding  the  cleansing  of  the  atmosphere  of  international  politics 
through  the  natural  regime  of  liberty  of  international  economic 
relations. 

For  this  unhealthy  and  dangerous  condition  of  international 
politics  yet  another  empirical  remedy  is  proposed:  international 
obligatory  arbitration.  It  is  forgotten  that  tribunals  do  not 
make  morals.  Whether  dealing  with  arbitration  or  other  issues, 
they  cannot  create  justice  nor  even  define  its  principles.  They 
can  do  nothing  more  than  apply  the  active  principles  of  justice 
and  the  rules  of  morality  already  recognized.  The  principle  of 
morality  to  be  recognized,  and  the  rule  of  justice  to  be  put  into 
practice  previous  to  the  functioning  of  an  international  tribunal, 
is  the  principle  and  the  rule  of  economic  freedom  and  equal 
opportunities  offered  by  and  afforded  to  all  peoples.  That  is  a 
regime  of  justice  vital  to  small  nations  (exchange  of  productions 

48 


being  all  the  more  necessary  to  peoples  occupying  restricted 
portions  of  the  globe,  since  their  own  products  are  limited  in 
diversity)  and  to  certain  great  nations  destined  to  remain  among 
the  most  powerful.  Here  are  fundamental  interests  which  cannot 
be  left  to  "  arbitration. "  Obligatory  arbitration  cannot  precede 
the  regime  of  the  morality  and  of  the  vital  justice  of  freedom  of 
exchange.  At  the  least,  it  cannot  precede  a  decisive  contributory 
step,  on  the  part  of  the  protectionist  nations,  towards  their 
ultimate  adoption  of  such  a  regime:  but,  this  secured,  voluntary 
acceptance  of  obligatory  arbitration  will  soon  become  its  con- 
sequence, natural  and  beneficial. 

After  having  entertained  with  favor,  but  without  logic,  the 
idea  of  obligatory  international  arbitration  (and  following  thereon 
the  anti-progressive  idea  of  the  constitution  of  a  "United  States 
of  Europe,"  happily  impossible  of  realization)  many  pacifists 
appear  at  this  moment  to  follow  assiduously  the  conception  of 
instituting  a  " Supernational  Grand  Council,"  charged  with  the 
"  organization "  and  maintenance  of  peace.  They  seem  to  have 
forgotten  that  such  an  institution  could  not  last  if  imposed  by 
force.  It  must  be  the  outcome  of  a  general  consent.  And  that 
presupposes  "good  will,"  which  can  only  arise  out  of  the  prior 
establishment  of  a  regime  of  international  economic  justice. 
Those  pacifists  have  apparently  also  not  taken  sufficiently  into 
account  the  fact  that  peace  is  not  a  state  of  things  to  be 
"organized,"  but,  on  the  contrary,  one  to  be  "naturally"  called 
into  being  and  maintained  under  the  influence  of  adequate  con- 
ditions. It  would  seem  that,  for  the  moment,  a  "Supernational 
Grand  Council"  has  more  need  of  peace  than  peace  has  of  a 
"Supernational  Grand  Council."  This  institution,  like  obliga- 
tory arbitration,  cannot  be  brought  into  existence,  cannot  live, 
cannot  develop  itself,  except  in  the  atmosphere  and  through  the 
spirit  of  Free  Trade. 1 

1One  can  conceive  the  more  or  less  satisfactory  and  durable  working 
of  such  institutions  between  a  Protectionist  and  a  Free  Trade  nation,  but  not 
between  two  protectionist  nations.  The  institutions  of  peace  necessitate  the 
spirit  of  liberty,  goodwill  and  justice  which  is  inspired  by  and  inspires  Free 
Trade. 

A  few  words  in  passing  with  reference  to  the  idea  of  a  "  league  of  neutrals  " 
or  a  coalition  of  peaceful  nations  with  the  object  of  "enforcing  peace"  and 
eventually  declaring  war  against  aggressors.  It  is,  from  more  than  one  point 
of  view,  a  bizarre  conception. 

It  is  anti-judicial.  Any  treaty  having  war  as  its  object  or  implying 
obligation  thereto  is  anti-judicial,  because  such  object  or  implication,  being 

49 


Advocates  of  democratic  control,  international  arbitrators, 
"  peace  organizers ! "  give  ear  to  this :  The  successful  issue  of  your 
laudable  enterprises  is  dependent  on  your  concurrence  and  resolve 
to  bring  about  the  installation  of  international  economic  liberty 
and  justice. 

7.    THE  PROBLEM  or  NATIONALITIES 

Our  study  cannot  neglect  consideration  of  the  legitimate 
aspirations  to  independence  of  the  small  ethnical,  historical,  or 
political  nations.  But  we  do  not  hesitate  to  express  the  opinion 
that  the  problem  of  nationalities  is  insoluble  by  itself — that  is  to 
say,  if  isolated  from  the  general  problem  of  creating  the  natural 
conditions  of  permanent  peace. 

Freedom  of  nationalities  will  be  the  result  of  international 
security;  it  cannot  be  the  cause  of  it.  As  long  as  international 
insecurity  subsists  it  will  confirm  the  peoples  in  the  entirely  just 
idea  that  national  might  and  great  empires  are  necessities.  They 
will,  by  force,  form  compact  national  blocks  and,  incited  by  vital 
interests,  they  will  refuse  to  listen  to  the  pleas  of  sacrificed  and 
wretched  subject  nationalities.  Moreover,  the  constitution  of 
great  economic  and  political  units  is  the  logical  consequence  of  the 
illogical  system  of  refusing  international  co-operation.  And  it  is 
extremely  doubtful  whether,  under  the  regime  of  reciprocal 
immoral  or  "amoral,"  is  illicit  and  null  and  void  in  natural  and  positive  law. 
A  "league  of  neutrals"  would  fatally  collapse  at  the  psychological  moment. 

A  coalition  of  nations,  no  matter  in  what  guise,  could  be  morally  tolerable 
only  if  it  had  as  its  object  the  defense  of  the  established  regime  of  international 
justice.  It  could  not  be  effective  and  durable  unless  based  on  a  sound  founda- 
tion of  satisfied  legitimate  interests.  Short  of  this  it  would  be  a  "league 
to  enforce  injustice."  It  has  often  been  contended  that  a  force  will  always 
be  necessary  at  the  service  of  justice  and  morality,  that  these  must  be  "backed" 
by  it.  But  does  not  this  very  contention  imply  that  justice  and  morals 
must  exist  before  the  force  "backing"  them? 

In  our  epoch  of  industrial  and  commercial  development,  when  the 
progress  and  the  very  existence  of  peoples  is  fundamentally  dependent  on 
their  achievements  in  these  domains,  it  is  necessary  to  commence  by  creating 
content  and  harmony  of  interests  through  the  justice  of  economic  liberty. 
And  then  a  "league  of  nations"  would  remain  as  "platonic"  as* it  would  be 
formidable.  It  would  command,  and  could  impose,  a  penalty,  irresistible, 
but  which  in  practice  would  prove  unnecessary — the  exclusion,  pure  and 
simple  (for,  say,  a  century),  of  disturbers  of  the  peace  from  all  economic  re- 
lations with  the  co-operative  federation  of  peoples. 

Moreover,  all  projects  of  coalition  (economic  boycott,  international 
force)  proceed  alike  from  the  false  idea  that  it  is  possible  to  establish  and 
secure  permanent  peace  by  means  of  force,  whereas  justice  only  is  capable 
of  doing  this. 

50 


economic  exclusions,  the  small  nationalities  would  have  a  true 
interest  in  their  segregation  from  great  empires  and  in  an  economic 
and  political  isolation  which  for  them  would  signify  misery  and 
decadence  as  well  as,  in  the  main,  increased  exterior  insecurity. 

Had  all  nations  lived,  if  only  for  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
under  the  regime  of  freedom  of  exchange  and  intercommunication, 
following  on  a  like  period  of  preparatory  tendency  toward  such 
absolute  Free  Trade,  they  would  clearly  recognize  that  all  the 
advantages  which  formerly  accrued  to  them  as  the  outcome  of 
territorial  aggrandizement,  of  domination,  and  of  centralization 
were  obtainable — without  the  evils  consequent  on  these,  and  in 
much  increased  measure — by  international  freedom  of  intercourse. 
The  idea  of  co-operation  and  association  would  substitute  itself 
for  that  of  "power."  Peoples  would  purge  themselves  of  the 
madness  of  "  Empires. "  And  gradually  even  the  great  acquisitive 
nations  would  no  longer  find  it  detrimental  to  their  interests  and 
progress  to  accord  to  the  various  nationalities  of  which  they  are 
composed  governmental  autonomy  or  even  independence — which 
under  the  regime  of  general  free  exchange  and  " open-door"  would 
prove  for  all,  great  and  small,  a  great  boon. 

The  difficulties  of  interior  politics  would  be  singularly  lessened, 
for  it  is  infinitely  easier  to  discover  and  practise  methods  and  rules 
of  government  appropriate  to  national  life  in  progress  through 
increasing  liberty  when  political  groups  are  restricted  and  homo- 
geneous (one  of  the  reasons  of  the  absurdity  of  the  idea  of  a  United 
States  of  Europe).  The  internal  civil,  moral,  and  political  liberty 
and  prosperity  of  nations  can  be  largely  influenced  by  the  freedom 
of  their  external  economic  relations;  they  are  perhaps  definitely 
dependent  on  this.  It  is  also  certain  that,  were  political  collec- 
tivities more  circumscribed,  their  exterior  relations,  inspired  by 
a  healthier  spirit,  would  be  smoother:  by  very  reason  of  their 
scantiness  and  of  the  consequently  necessary  increment  of  their 
exterior  relations  the  sentiment  of  nationality  would,  gradually, 
under  a  regime  of  liberty  and  security,  yield  to  the  spirit  of  inter- 
nationalism, and  patriotic  passion  and  savagery  to  humanitarian 
reason.  True  human  progress — social,  moral,  national,  and 
international — depends,  without  doubt,  on  the  possibility  of 
constituting  and  of  preserving  circumscribed  political  groups, 
economically  federated  in  co-operative  unity.  Admitting  the 
truth  of  the  principle  propounded  by  Kant  in  his  "Essay  on 
Perpetual  Peace,"  that  a  "law  of  nations  cannot  be  founded 
except  by  a  federalism  of  Free  States,"  it  appears  difficult  to 


understand  how  this  principle  could  be  applied  except  by  co- 
operative economic  federation,  signifying  freedom  of  international 
trade  intercourse. 

If  the  idea  of  ethnical  superiorities  is  full  of  uncertainty 
(each  race,  each  people  having  its  defects  and  merits) ,  that  of  the 
superiority  of  great  nations  is  a  mere  prejudice.  To  the  impartial 
observer  the  contrary  is  rather  the  fact,  despite  the  inferiority 
of  the  economic  conditions  of  the  small  peoples,  brought  about 
by  the  narrow  and  false  Protectionist  spirit  of  the  great  peoples. 
These  latter  are  superior  chiefly  in  the  extent  and  danger  of  their 
errors.  Nevertheless,  in  the  absence  of  such  a  general  progress  of 
ideas  as  will  gradually  substitute  the  international  conception  of  free 
exchange  and  co-operation  for  that  of  power  and  domination,  there 
will  finally  remain  to  small  nations  only  Dante's  "lasciate  ogni  spe- 
ranza  "  whatever  may  be  their  temporary  situation  and  experiences. 

We  believe  we  have  said  enough  on  the  subject  to  show  that 
the  problem  of  nationalities  cannot  be  definitely  and  satisfactorily 
solved  by  artificial  combinations  of  statesmen  and  "great  poli- 
ticians. "  The  true  origins  of  nationalities  are  economic, l  and  the 
natural  and  dominating  conditions  of  the  evolution  of  the 
phenomenon  must  remain  economic. 

The  actual  problem  is  how  to  complete  the  transition  from 
the  military  civilization  to  the  economic  and  pacific  civilization. 

The  first  is  characterized  by: — 

1.  Aggrandizement  of  states  by  conquest;  federation  by 

force;  centralization  by  " authority. " 

2.  Enrichment,  progress,  and  unity  of  each  national  unit 

sought  in  the  pacific  system  of  Free  Trade  applied  to 
internal  relations. 

3.  The  hostile  system  of  "balance  of  trade"  and  of  Pro- 

tectionism applied  to  international  relations. 

4.  Precarious  maintenance   of   order  between  nations   by 

hegemony  or  by  "balance  of  power." 

1  Neither  "race,"  language,  religion,  custom,  history,  nor  common 
government  constitutes  the  principal  factor  in  the  formation  of  nationalities. 
It  is  easy  to  realize  this.  It  is  common  economic  interests  and  relations 
combined  with  one  or  the  other  or  with  several  of  those  factors,  which  go  to 
form  a  nationality.  The  cohesion  of  nationalities  is  best  assured  when 
common  economic  interests  are  combined  with  most  of  the  aforesaid  elements. 

52 


The  economic  civilization  will  be  characterized  by — 

1.  Enrichment  and  general  progress  of  all  peoples  achieved 

by  the  peaceful  and  peace-making  method  of  Free  Trade 
applied  to  international  as  well  as  to  national  relations. 

2.  Voluntary   gradual  partition  of  great  States;  political 

decentralization,  and  autonomous  government  of  their 
constituent  nationalities  according  to  affinities  and 
aspirations,  ethnical,  ethical,  political,  or  territorial. 

3.  Growth  of  interpenetration  and  intermingling  of  peoples; 

fusion  of  temperaments  and  characters  (propitiated  by 
the  reduction  of  political  units,  and  the  economic 
association  of  such  reduced  units.) 

4.  International  order  sustained  by  solidarity  of  interests 

and  unity  of  moral  aspirations — i.e.  by  the  co-opera- 
tive association  of  peoples  in  the  material,  intellectual, 
and  moral  order. 

Such  is,  we  think,  the  necessary  process  from  integration  to 
disintegration,  of  transformation  from  more  or  less  confused 
uniformity  to  diversity,  from  homogeneity  to  heterogeneity, 
which  should  mark  the  natural  and  progressive  evolution  of  the 
phenomenon  of  nationalities.1 

For  effecting,  without  great  upheavals,  the  difficult  transition 
of  the  military  civilization  to  the  economic  and  pacific  civilization 
it  would  have  been  necessary  to  balance  the  too  rapid  strides 
which  have  been  made  in  physical  sciences  and  their  applications — 
technics,  industries,  communications — by  a  corresponding  progress 
in  economic  morals  and  in  political  philosophy  to  both  of  which 
international  ethics  are  relevant.  This  progress  has  not  been 
achieved,  it  has  yet  to  be  attained  by  all  peoples.  (Conservation 
of  the  Protectionist  system  by  the  majority  of  great  nations 
has  been  the  baneful  consequence  of  this  lack  of  balance.)  If 

xWe  do  not  theoretically  rule  out  a  further  process  from  disintegration 
to  reintegration  and  to  settled  uniformity  and  homogeneity;  that  is  to  say, 
we  do  not  deny  the  probability  of  an  ulterior  voluntary  political  reunion 
of  some  of  the  peoples,  nor  even  the  possibility  of  the  ultimate  voluntary 
political  federation  of  an  economically,  intellectually  and  morally  united 
mankind. 

But  we  do  practically  and  theoretically  rule  out  any  prospect  of  a 
future  peaceful  and  lasting  political  federation  (partial  or  total)  of  mankind, 
if  not  preceded  by  a  long  period  of  economic  civilization  (characterized  by 
political  independence  or  autonomy  and  by  economic  association)  and  if  not 
founded  on  absolute  freedom  of  economic  intercourse  between  the  members 
of  the  group  politically  federated. 

53 


the  absence  of  the  indispensable  parallelism  and  equilibrium  of 
moral  and  material  progress  persists,  it  is  extremely  probable 
that  humanity  will  be  obliged  to  undergo  a  very  long  period  of 
wars,  of  revolutions,  of  national  and  international  anarchy,  from 
which  civilization  will  recover  but  very  slowly.1 

8.     MODERN  WARS  AND  PEACE 

Like  all  phenomena,  the  catastrophic  phenomenon  of  war 
cannot  be  mastered  except  by  knowledge  and  mastery  of  its  causes. 

Numerous  and  diverse  causes  of  dissension  may  occur 
between  individuals  or  groups  belonging  to  the  same  national 
collectivity.  Affecting  as  they  sometimes  do  political  and  moral 
interests,  before  which  common  material  interests  momentarily 
disappear  or  are  effaced,  they  may  translate  themselves  into 
revolution  and  civil  war.  When  great  empires  composed  of 
mosaic  nationalities  are,  in  spite  of  Free  Trade  within  themselves, 
menaced  by  dissolution,  it  is  because  between  varied  peoples, 
living  under  a  common  central  government  (or  between  such  peoples 
and  their  necessarily  strong  Government)  there  must  come  about 
causes  of  disagreement,  so  diverse  and  grave  as  to  render  every 
other  consideration  subordinate  thereto.  But  causes  of  discord 
between  separate  nations  (or  between  really  autonomous  nation- 
alities) can  neither  be  numerous  nor  diverse,  their  actually  impor- 
tant relations  being  almost  exclusively  of  an  economic  nature. 
Such  are,  in  any  case,  those  of  their  relations  which  give  rise  to 
extremely  strong  quarrels.  International  conflicts  have  more  and 
more  their  origin  and  deep  cause  in  unsound  economics.  These 
conflicts  may  more  and  more  be  looked  upon  as  "natural  phe- 
nomena"— in  this  sense  that  they  are  due  to  the  reaction  of  natural 
economic  laws,  forces  or  needs,  outraged  by  the  anti-natural  politics 
of  the  nations. 

The  most  primitive  wars  were  expeditions  of  hunger  or 
brigandage.  In  the  main  all  wars  have  had  as  their  objective 
territorial  increase  and  acquisition  of  economic  advantages.  After 
having  passed  the  period  of  wars  which  apparently  had  as  their 
causes  dynastic  or  personal  ambitions  and  rivalries  of  kings,  and 

1  While  we  cannot  here  consider  and  propound  it,  we  should  at  least 
indicate  the  cause,  very  simple  but  very  profound  and  universally  active,  of 
this  absence  of  parallelism  and  equilibrium  of  moral  and  material  progress: 
namely — the  want  or  defect  in  all  human  institutions — economic,  social,  and 
political — of  individual  responsibility,  which  is  the  natural  curb  of  excessive 
utilitarian  initiatives  and  activities  and  the  only  real  factor  in  education  and 
moralization. 

54 


of  those  wars  in  which  religious  fanaticism  was  the  apparent 
primary  cause,  humanity  is  entering  into  a  period — which  must 
rapidly  be  brought  to  an  end — of  wars  of  which  the  underlying 
causes  are  distinctly  economic.  Race  hatred,  national  passions, 
inferior  "ideals"  of  peoples  no  longer  intervene  as  influential 
factors  except  in  so  far  as  they  second  the  rivalries  of  the  industrial, 
commercial,  and  financial  interests  of  powerful  groups  — syndicates 
cartels,  and  trusts. 

The  great  nations  urged  by  these  interests  covet  "  assured 
markets"  and  " spheres  of  influence"  from  which  other  nations 
shall  be  excluded  (and  in  which  the  natives  shall  be  exhaustively 
exploited.  They  desire  to  secure  them,  after  conquest,  by  pro- 
tectionist privileges  and  monopolies  (by  "Imperialism") — that  is 
to  say  by  international  injustice.  Their  "great  politicians" 
naturally  give  zealous  support  to  those  debased  enterprises,  rely- 
ing, if  need  be,  for  opposition  to  adverse  interests,  on  "alliances" 
or  "ententes."  Their  Governments  are  then  induced  to  impose 
on  nations  from  whose  interests  competition  is  feared  terms  as 
disadvantageous  as  possible.  Of  commerce  and  industry,  sole 
platform  of  international  rapprochement  for  practically  all  indi- 
viduals, sole  actual  possible  platform  of  international  moralityt 
Governments  make  a  terrain  of  exclusion,  discord,  hate,  and 
international  immorality.  No  statesman  has  the  courage,  or 
even  perhaps  the  wisdom,  to  cry  to  Humanity:  Stop!  Through 
the  mouths  of  their  leaders  (a  few  excepted)  the  masses  equally 
show  the  measure  of  their  incapacity.  And  so,  by  the  artifices  of 
some  and  through  the  ignorance  of  the  many,  the  causes  are 
brought  about  and  the  conditions  developed  of  modern  wars. 
Thence  will  fatefully  arise  the  catastrophic  phenomenon.  Those 
most  benefited  by  injustice  will  be  condemned  to  defend  (par  lefer 
et  par  le  sang),  against  those  less  favored,  the  portions  of  the  globe 
which  they  have  conquered,  and  even  those  territories  which 
they  have  possessed  immemorially.  So  long  as  there  exists  the 
general  desire  and  prejudice  in  favor  of  economically  closed  and 
monopolistic  empires,  so  long  will  the  catastrophic  phenomenon 
repeat  itself  and  increase  in  gravity.  The  ignorance  and  injustice 
of  conquerors  will,  unfailingly,  bring  their  own  retribution  in 
ultimate  attack  by  other  would-be  conquerors. 

At  our  epoch  the  problem  of  peace  consists  in  substituting  for 
the  causes  of  war,  which  are  economic,  the  natural  economic 
condition  of  peace.  Modern  peace  must  be  a  Pax  Economica. 
Such  will  be  the  fruit  of  knowledge  and  practice  of  an  international 

55 


morality  inspired  by  that  economic  justice  which  is  comprised 
in  liberty  of  international  co-operation,  competition  and  exchange. 
Shall  Love,  or  even  Concord,  between  men  not  be  eternally 
dependent  on  their  mutual  practice  of  justice? l 

9.    THE  INTERNATIONAL  MORALITY  or  EXCHANGE 

Harmony  must  be  the  result  of  Justice,  and  Justice  is  in- 
separable from  Truth.  Progress  of  moral  conduct  is  dependent 
on  progress  of  intellectual  truth. 

The  condition  of  international  peace  is  international  morality. 
This  is  dependent  firstly  on  Knowledge  of  international  moral 
truth  and  secondly  on  the  practice  of  that  truth  (peoples  will  find 
in  this  practice  a  twofold  interest :  interior  prosperity  and  exterior 
tranquillity.)  The  love  of  justice  and  the  desire  for  morality 
will  follow,  but  they  cannot  precede  knowledge  and  practice.  Cause 
and  effect  will  act  and  react  interchangeably,  but  justice  and 
morality  must  pass  from  the  "conscious"  into  the  "unconscious. " 
Progress  of  sentiment  (of  "good  will")  can  only  be  consequent 
on  progressive  knowledge  and  increasing  practice  of  truth.  It 
is  equally  so  in  international  as  in  social  and  in  individual  affairs. 

Knowledge  of  the  natural  economic  truths  is  fundamental 
to  justice,  order,  morality,  and  security,  social  and  international. 
It  furnishes  the  most  certain  and  positive  rules  of  the  art  of  politics. 
These  truths  and  rules  cannot  be  ignored  or  even  misunderstood 
with  impunity. 

War  is  the  inevitable  outcome  of  a  state  of  persistent  inter- 
national "amorality"  and  insecurity.  Peace,  in  such  a  state,  is 
but  an  unstable  equilibrium  between  adverse  forces.  It  is  at  the 
mercy  of  those  who  consider  themselves  capable  of  emerging  from 

xTo  contest  the  international  justice  of  free  exchange  is  an  enterprise 
which  henceforth  will  not  be  undertaken  except  by  those  who  support  the 
rights  of  conquest,  of  confiscation,  of  monopoly,  of  occupation,  with  jus 
utendi  et  abutendi,  i.e.  by  the  advocates  of  force,  of  right  by  might. 

We  cannot  hope  to  stay  the  blasphemous  contention  of  those  who, 
while  recognizing  the  national  and  international  immorality  of  Protectionism, 
will  nevertheless  continue  to  affirm  that  it  contributes  to  the  enrichment  of 
nations  (certain  nations  may  indeed  become  prosperous,  by  reason  of  special 
causes,  in  spite  of  that  system,  which  tends  to  impoverishment;  furthermore, 
Protectionism,  in  bringing  about  by  spoliation  the  unjust  partition  of  a  nation's 
wealth,  gives  to  many  superficial  observers  an  exaggerated  idea  of  general 
prosperity).  Of  those  we  ask,  Of  what  value  such  enrichment  if  doomed  to 
be  annihilated  by  war,  tenfold,  aye  a  hundredfold?  Consider  this,  you 
insensate  manufacturers,  you  blind  traders,  who  in  the  midst  of  this  most 

56 


the  general  insecurity  by  creating  self-security  through  the 
vanquishing  and  subjection  of  others.  Such  an  " amoral  peace" 
is  comparable  to  the  "good  relations"  of  cannibals;  it  also  evokes 
a  regime  of  "  international  jungleism,"  for  even  lions  and  tigers 
do  not  live  without  a  certain  mutual  " respect"  and,  at  times,  "in 
peace. " 

For  the  last  half-century  European  amorality  and  insecurity 
resulting  in  desire  of  conquest  in  some  and  fear  of  conquest  in 
others,  has  manifested  itself  by  militarism  put  at  the  service  of 
international  economic  error  and  injustice.  When  truth  and 
justice  making  morality  do  not  rule  between  States  then  force 
must  and  will  be  supreme.  When  international  law  is  not  inter- 
national truth  and  justice,  there  remains  but  force  to  overcome 
and  vanquish  this  false  right. 

Absolute  security  and  certain  peace  are  conceivable  only 
in  so  far  as  no  peoples  have  any  interest  to  desire,  and  consequently 
none  of  them  has  any  reason  to  fear,  conquest.  Now,  liberty  of 
economic  relations  (carrying  in  its  train,  as  it  does,  liberty  of 
general  intercourse)  between  two  peoples  is  equivalent  to  mutual 
annexation  by  these  two  peoples;  and  liberty  of  relations  between 

terrible  of  all  wars  do  not  hesitate  to  demand  measures  that  would  prepare 
the  way  for  its  renewal.  May  it  be  given  to  a  proletariat,  better  informed 
better  advised,  to  determinedly  and  successfully  oppose  your  errors.  For  your 
sake,  may  these  appear  to  them  more  foolish  than  criminal. 

Others,  alas  numerous'  will  say,  "International  Free  Trade,  while  it 
is  international  justice,  is  also  freedom  of  international  economic  competition 
and  struggle;  therein  lies  its  defect. " 

Free  economic  competition  is  indeed  discredited — and  very  wrongly 
so.  Free  competition  is  not  "struggle"  but  "enterprise"  to  the  end  of 
improved  service  resulting  in  profit  to  each  and  all.  Derived  from  the  spirit 
of  liberty,  and  consequently  of  justice,  which  it  preserves  and  develops,  it  is 
moralizing  and  brings  about  harmony  of  spirit  and  of  all  concerned  interests. 
It  is  restriction  of  competition  under  the  guise  of  privileges  and  monopolies 
which  is  demoralizing,  which  exerts  a  perturbing  social  and  international 
action,  and  which  by  spoliation  ends  in  antagonism.  The  danger,  then,  is  to 
accuse  free  competition  of  the  evils  caused  by  privilege  and  monopoly,  to 
impute  to  liberty,  mother  of  all  progress,  the  criminal  mischiefs  of  restraint. 

Our  present  economic  and  social  organization  is  almost  wholly  comprised 
of  restrictions,  privileges,  and  monopolies  (of  which  Protection  is  only  one 
of  the  forms  and  manifestations.)  The  critical  incapacity  of  the  men  and 
women  of  our  epoch,  even  the  most  perspicacious,  to  discover  the  root  of  these 
evils  and  our  consequent  impotence  to  abolish  them  will  appear  to  the  historian 
as  the  strangest  of  the  determining  circumstances  of  the  great  international 
and  social  crisis  which  will  so  mightily  and  tragically  characterize  the  twentieth 
century. 

57 


all  peoples  would  be  equivalent  to  reciprocal  annexation  by  all 
peoples. l  No  people  would  any  longer  have  an  important  or  even 
serious  interest  in  vanquishing  other  peoples  and  conquering  their 
territories.  Given  liberty  of  international  economic  relations, 
it  is  certain  that  international  justice,  morality,  security,  and  peace 
would  become  a  positive,  practical,  and  absolute  state  of  things. 

True  civilization  will  be  the  result  of  knowledge  and  be 
founded  on  practice  of  natural  economic  truths. 

The  present  war,  its  abominations,  its  crimes,  its  duration — 
and  its  sequel,  probably  graver  than  the  war  itself — is  not  the 
direct  outcome  of  the  spirit  of  injustice  and  brigandage  in  men, 
but  the  result  of  the  general  ignorance  and  disregard  by  peoples 
and  their  leaders  of  those  economic  truths.  They  were  bound  to 
be  of  a  decisively  capital  importance  at  an  epoch  which  will 
ever  remain  characterized  by  an  extraordinary  development  of 
industries  and  a  consequent  need  of  corresponding  expansion  of 
international  commerce.2 

Thus  it  has  happened  that  certain  peoples  and  their  leaders 
have  considered  supreme  recourse  to  force  and  utmost  violence 
necessary  and  entirely  legitimate,  in  order  in  their  mind  to  redress 
inequalities  and  injustices  and  put  an  end  to  insecurity — whereas 
to  these  evils  only  the  political  application  of  the  principles  of 
economic  science,  under  the  form  of  international  liberty  of 
enterprise,  commerce,  and  communications,  can  achieve  a  complete 
and  definite  remedy.  War  has,  for  a  long  time  past,  been  regarded 
as  the  inevitable  issue  of  a  difficult  international  situation  threat- 
ening to  become  impossible.  Instead  of  concerning  themselves 
with  remedying  this  situation,  nations  and  their  leaders  thought 
only  of  preparing  for  war.  War  broke  out.  And  the  lack  of 

1According  to  the  highly  suggestive  remark  of  Monsieur  H.  L.  Follin  in 
" Vindividualiste  Europlen." 

2  Is  it  not  incredible  that  in  our  time  and  in  all  countries  there  is  certainly 
not  one  in  ten  of  business  men,  members  of  the  liberal  professions,  politicians, 
writers,  professors,  scientists,  statesmen,  who  possesses  a  thorough  grasp  of  the 
elementary  principles  underlying  political  economy,  which  is  not  only  the 
philosophy  of  industry  and  commerce  but  the  natural  fundamental  science 
of  morals  and  law,  the  necessary  starting-point  of  every  sane  philosophy  in 
private  and  political  life  (economic  life  being  the  fundamental  life  of  individuals 
and  peoples),  and  the  indispensable  scientific  pre-condition  of  all  serious  study 
and  just  appreciation  of  political  questions,  easy  or  difficult? 

Our  "realism,"  our  "idealism,"  our  politics  are  worthless;  they  are 
ideologic  constructions  without  bases. 

Future  historians  will  easily  in  the  light  of  this  statement  on  the  general 
ignorance  of  economics  understand  all  our  failures,  social  and  international. 

58 


philosophical  and  moral  truth  is  such  among  all  peoples  (and  in 
all  spheres  without  a  single  exception)  that,  after  having  brought 
about  war,  it  leaves  each  of  the  belligerent  parties  incapable  of 
conceiving  a  peace  possible  by  means  other  than  suppression, 
pure  and  simple,  of  the  enemy  nations — however  appalling  the 
reciprocal  massacre,  ruin  and  annihilation!  All  nations  are 
apparently  already  resigned  to  sacrifice  to  the  moloch  of  militarism, 
in  the  future  as  at  present  (with  the  object  of  defending  themselves 
against  those  as  fearful  as  themselves),  all  remnants  of  their  past 
riches  in  men  and  wealth!  This  implacable  war  is  no  more  the 
outcome  of  bad  instincts  than  is  smallpox  or  cholera. 

The  ignorance  and  stupidity  of  men  have  always  proved 
more  inexorable  and  caused  them  more  suffering  than  their 
wickedness.  It  must  be  so.  Men  are  ordered  to  become  good 
and  wise.  Goodness  unless  inspired  by  wisdom  is  incapable  of 
evolving  progressive  morality.  Good  cannot  be  separated  from 
Progress. l 

Moreover,  no  nation,  however  great  its  desire  to  be  regarded 
as  "good,  civilized,  peaceable,"  has  so  far  given  proof  of  its 
disdain  of  war  and  conquest,  nor  of  its  reprobation  of  their  in- 
justices and  cruelties.  No  "superior"  nation  has  given  this 
example  of  morality  to  "inferior  and  barbarous"  nations.  As 
there  exists  no  criterion  nor  line  of  demarcation  of  the  relative 
superiority  or  inferiority  of  peoples,  it  is  only  too  easily  explainable 
that  nations  who  consider  themselves  superior  should  adopt 
towards  other  nations  equally  imbued  with  the  idea  of  "Superi- 
ority" that  conception  and  policy  of  hostility,  of  conquest,  of 
political  and  economic  subjugation,  which  has  always  prevailed 
between  peoples  presumed  to  be  superior  and  those  presumed  to 
be  inferior — these  last  having  always  been  treated  without  justice, 
benevolence,  pity. 

After  nineteen  centuries  of  political  efforts  and  Christian 
preaching,  the  state  of  relationship  and  the  mutual  attitude  of 
nations,  "civilized  and  Christian,"  do  not,  alike  in  time  of  peace 
as  in  time  of  war,  differ  essentially  from  those  of  savage  tribes. 
Everywhere  nations  are  compelled  to  prepare  to  fight  at  any 

JThe  first  men  who  abandoned  the  system  of  force  for  the  system  of 
exchange  did  not  so  because  it  was  just  and  good,  but  because  it  was  profitable, 
wise  and  true.  The  origin  of  peaceful  civil  relations,  of  social  morality,  of 
civilization,  is  not  in  good  feelings  but  in  wisdom — in  knowledge  of  a  law  of 
nature,  of  a  law  of  God,  of  the  law  of  exchange  of  services.  The  process  of  peace 
has  only  to  be  continued  and  extended  by  recognizing  the  profitableness, 
wisdom  and  truth  of  adopting  free  relations  of  exchange  between  nations. 

59 


moment  for  the  defence  of  their  chattels,  of  their  soil,  of  their 
liberty,  even  for  the  very  preservation  of  their  physical  existence. 

More  menacing  still  seems  the  future 

For  this  apparently  desperate  state  of  things  there  is  happily 
a  discernible  cause  and  a  possible  remedy:  it  is  that  there  can  be  no 
international  morality  save  by  knowledge  and  practice  of  natural 
and  positive  international  morals.  The  indispensable  and  sole 
possible  foundation  of  that  morality  will  be  freedom  of  labor  and 
of  exchange  of  things  and  services  between  national  collectivities — 
that  is  to  say,  liberty  of  international  co-operation  without 
privileges  and  monopolies.  It  is  incumbent  on  men  to  recognize 
that  such  is  the  only  natural  and  solid  base  of  a  universal  and 
permanent  peace. 

10.    CONCLUSION:    THE     NATURAL     NECESSITY     OF     INTERNA- 
TIONAL EXCHANGE 

The  economic  activities  and  utilitarian  progress  of  men  are 
the  necessary  means  and  material  support  of  their  moral  progress. 
Economics  form  the  base  of  civilization.  Moral  progress  is  its 
consummation  and  end,  because  it  alone  is  capable  of  response  to 
Finalities.  Material  progress,  if  not  followed  in  due  time  by 
corresponding  and  "  compensating "  moral  progress,  will  become 
a  cause  of  corruption  and  perdition.  Persistent  retardation  of 
advance  in  morality  entails  the  annihilation  of  the  works  of  men 
and  the  disappearance  of  their  civilizations. 

The  moral  accomplishment  of  the  moral  progress  of  national 
collectivities  must  result  from  thought  and  in  peace,  social  and 
international.  Failing  this  the  incoercible  law  of  progress  will 
finally  impose  its  action  by  force — in  wars  and  revolutions. 
Conflict,  in  view  of  victory  going  to  the  strongest  (presumably  the 
most  apt  and  "best"),  is  the  heroic,  primitive,  inferior,  and 
uncertain  means  of  the  progressive  development  of  humanity. 
It  is  its  "amoral"  means.  Co-operation  by  division  of  labor  and 
exchange — indispensable  and  permanent  manifestation  of  human 
solidarity,  first  and  eternal  form  of  mutual  help,  and  the  prelim- 
inary necessary  condition  to  altruism — is  the  superior  and  certain 
means  of  this  progressive  development.  It  is  its  moral  means. 

Being,  as  it  is,  the  natural  phenomenon  in  which  lies  the  origin 
of  "justice,"  exchange  is  par  excellence  the  natural  moral  phenom- 
enon; hence  its  extreme  importance  in  respect  to  internal  and 
international  relations;  hence  its  constructive  power;  hence,  also, 

60 


the  destructive  consequences — without  limit — of  the  attempts 
to  prevent  its  accomplishment;  hence  the  fatef nines s  of  Exchange. 
Thus  is  explained  to  those  who  as  political  philosophers  contem- 
plate the  great  contemporaneous  events,  how,  across  the  path  of 
Humanity,  there  strides  a  monster  combining  the  pitilessness  of 
the  Sphinx  with  the  frightfulness  of  the  Minotaur.  "Thou  shalt 
go  no  farther, "  he  says.  "It  is  not  by  an  enigma  but  because  of 
an  imperative  and  categoric  dilemma  that  I  bid  thee  halt.  Thou 
must  emerge  from  thy  state  of  Protectionist  and  militarist  ignor- 
ance and  amorality;  thou  must  recognize  the  moral  truth  of 
peace  by  free  exchange;  thou  must  practise  international  economic 
justice.  Otherwise  thou  art  condemned  to  a  succession  of  revolu- 
tions and  wars  which  will  ultimately  lead  to  barbarism.  For  thy 
persistent  refusal  to  adopt  the  ways  of  justice  will  be  the  proof 
and  measure  of  thy  actual  incapacity  to  further  true  progress; 
and  therefore  there  can  remain  only,  for  long  periods  to  come, 
the  law  of  brute  triumph  and  survival  of  those  best  fitted  for 
combat  and  slaughter. "  So  speaks  and  will  act  the  Monster. 

Yet  the  rational  interpretation  of  natural  moral  phenomena, 
revealing  as  it  does  to  men  the  International  Morality  of  Exchange, 
teaches  them  the  natural  necessity  of  international  co-operation, 
ever  more  free,  consequently  ever  more  just  and  increasing, 
as  the  only,  and  as  the  certain,  means  of  rescuing  nations  from  the 
natural  fatefulness  of  conflicts,  more  and  more  fearful. 

ENVOI 

Is  there  in  the  ranks  of  the  world's  rulers  and  leaders  a  statesman 
possessed  of  deserved  authority  who  has  the  wisdom  to  see,  the  courage 
to  proclaim,  and  the  strength  to  make  humanity  understand  and 
accept  the  essential  truth  of  the  hour?  Of  all  perils  the  greatest 
would  be  that  such  a  man  did  not  exist. 
November,  1915. 


61 


Part  III 


After  three  years  of  war:  Quo  vadis  ?  o  genus  hominum  ! 
THE  WAY  OF  SALVATION: 

AN    ECONOMIC    PEACE 


"  That  the  essential  principle  of  peace  is  the  actual  equality 
of  nations  in  all  matters  of  rights  and  privileges. " — 

WOODROW  WILSON,  Inauguration  Speech. 


THE  WAY  OF  SALVATION :  AN  ECONOMIC  PEACE 


i.    FUNDAMENTAL  JUSTICE 

Harmony  between  men,  peace,  be  it  social  or  international, 
will  never  exist  and  endure  unless  founded  on  justice.  Injustice, 
insecurity  and  conflict  are  inseparable;  justice,  security  and  peace 
likewise.  With  insecurity,  every  man  must  be  a  master  or 
seek  one.  That  the  peaceful  progress  of  Humanity  and  the 
continuance  of  civilization  depend  fundamentally  on  justice, 
social  and  international,  may  be  accepted  as  a  political  axiom. 

The  all  important  question,  therefore,  is  to  know  what, 
fundamentally,  justice  is.  Obviously  it  is  justice  in  the  funda- 
mental relations  of  men,  that  is  to  say,  in  their  relations  concerned 
with  their  fundamental  needs,  their  means  of  subsistance — food, 
clothing,  shelter.  Fundamental  justice  is  justice  in  economic 
relations. 

An  international  status  making  for  good- will,  harmony  and 
peace,  because  resting  on  justice,  must  first  of  all  afford  to  all 
nations  equality  in  economic  rights,  that  is  to  say,  equal  oppor- 
tunities of  peaceful  economic  activities  and  welfare.  Of  this  the 
ultimate  and  complete  expression  will  be  absolute  international 
freedom  in  the  exchange  of  mutual  economic  services. 

The  pacifist,  the  international  lawyer,  the  statesman  studying 
the  peace  problem  and  overlooking  the  necessity  of  this  inter- 
national economic  basis  is  to  be  compared  to  an  architect  who, 
planning  a  splendid  cathedral,  should  lose  sight  of  the  need  for  it 
of  a  solid  concrete  foundation.  Their  work  is  worthless.  Their 
edifices  would  crumble,  even  before  completion. 

2.    FREE-TRADE,  THE  ONLY  PEACE-MAKER 

Richard  Cobden  has  said:  "Free-Trade  is  the  best  peace- 
maker." We  make  bold  to  say:  "Free-Trade  has  become  the 
only  peace-maker. " 

The  desire  to  suppress  armies  and  navies,  to  have  "freedom 
of  the  seas,"  to  institute  "World's  Courts,"  to  organize  "Leagues 
to  Enforce  Peace,"  in  order  to  suppress  wars,  proceeds  from  an 

65 


extraordinary  illusion.  The  Truth — a  truth  of  simple  common 
sense — is  that  it  is  necessary  to  begin  by  creating  international 
security  before  suppressing  or  even  limiting  armies,  navies, 
and  achieving  "freedom  of  the  seas."  The  truth  is  that  it  is 
necessary  to  begin  by  propounding  and  accepting  the  principles 
of  international  justice  and  morality  before  instituting  tribunals 
for  judging  offenses  against  international  rights  and  morals; 
that  it  is  necessary  to  commence  by  adopting  the  conditions 
making  for  a  just  and  worthy  peace  before  " enforcing  peace." 

Now,  in  our  epoch  of  industrial  and  commercial  development, 
the  basic  principle  and  condition  of  international  security,  morality 
and  peace  are  equality  in  economic  rights,  reciprocity  in  oppor- 
tunities offered  and  in  services  rendered,  a  progress  inseparable 
from  international  arrangements  practically  tending  towards 
freedom  of  economic  relations.  It  is  along  these  lines  that  we 
must  seek  and  can  find  the  only  means  of  pacifying  the  World  and 
saving  civilization. 

This  does  not  mean  that  the  future  regime  of  economic 
relations  is  the  only  international  question,  but  it  does  mean  that 
being  basic  it  is  the  first  to  be  solved.  It  is  moreover  the  one 
question  the  solution  of  which  could  bring  about  the  international 
good  will  and  good  faith  indispensable  for  any  prospect  of  a 
fair  examination  and  successful  settlement  of  the  other  questions. 

3.    "REDUCTIO  AD  ABSURDUM" 

If  the  protectionist  system  were  in  conformity  with  economic 
truth  and  usefulness,  the  securing  by  nations  of  exclusive  and 
monopolistic  economic  domains  could  alone  respond  to  the  real 
and  inevitable  needs  of  progress  and  civilization.  The  founding 
by  every  nation  of  the  greatest  possible  "empire"  would  then  be 
not  only  a  national  right  but  a  national  duty — the  fundamental 
national  "virtue."  Conquest  would  be  justice;  permanent  war 
would  be  the  true  international  morality. 

In  that  case,  imperialist  Germany  would  have  been  right 
in  provoking  this  war;  and  Great  Britain  would  be  right  in  be- 
coming protectionist  and  militarist;  the  latter  would  only  be  doing 
her  duty  vis  a  vis  herself  if  she  carried  through  her  projected 
enterprise  of  securing  the  third  of  the  productive  territories  of  the 
World  for  her  own  more  or  less  exclusive  exploitation  and  ad- 
vantage; we  should  be  obliged  to  approve  and  laud  her  if  she 
succeeded  in  establishing  the  greatest  territorial  and  commercial 
monopoly  which  ever  cumbered  the  World. 

66 


Protectionism  and  militarism,  which  are  inseparable,  thus 
being  truth  and  right,  our  democratic  ideals  of  liberty,  equality, 
fraternity,  human  co-operation,  and  our  whole  conception  of 
civilization  would  appear  to  have  been  fundamentally  wrong. 
But  then  what  are  we  complaining  of?  and  what  are  we  fighting 
for? 

4.    PAST  FAILURES  AND  PRESENT  DUTY 

If  Germany  and  the  United  States,  following  the  meritorious 
and  persevering  example  given  to  the  World  by  Great  Britain 
during  more  than  sixty  years,  had  become  free-trade,  an  alliance 
between  Germany,  the  United  States  and  Great  Britain  would 
have  been  quite  naturally  concluded  more  than  thirty  years  ago. 
France  would  have  joined  them,  perhaps  after  some  hesitation. 
The  whole  World  would  have  been  legitimately  controlled  and 
administered  by  these  great  progressive  peoples  allied  for  Good 
and  Progress.  They  would  have  led  all  other  peoples  in  the  ways 
of  liberty,  true  democracy  and  peace.  A  policy  of  association 
and  co-operation  of  nations  would  have  been  substituted  for 
''Imperialism."  Humanity  would  not  have  followed  the  lead  of 
the  "Empire  builders"  and  thus  taken  the  ways  of  barbarism. 
Not  only  all  our  present  international  trouble  and  our  future 
trouble  with  the  Yellow  World  (for  half  a  century  misled  by  our 
bad  example)  but  also  a  great  part  of  our  past  and  of  our  terrific 
future  social  disturbances  would  have  been  avoided. 

Probably  the  only  remaining  chance  of  salvation  for  our 
civilization  is  in  the  adoption  by  the  United  States  and  by  Ger- 
many, and  the  preservation  by  England,  of  a  policy  of  interna- 
tional economic  freedom  and  morality. 

5.    THE  DEMOCRATIC  PEACE 

This  war  can  end  safely  only  with  a  victory  of  freedom  over 
Autocracy — aye,  of  freedom  over  Democracy!  For,  the  World 
could  not  be  made  safe  for  "Protectionist  Democracies."  It 
cannot  be  conceived  as  a  harmonious  ensemble  of  nations  restrict- 
ing one  another's  "making  of  a  living" — even  if  these  nations 
are  pleased  to  call  themselves  "Democracies." 

For  desire  of  territorial  agrandizements,  for  war,  conquest 
and  "Imperialism"  (democratic  or  autocratic)  there  exists,  by  the 
nature  and  force  of  things,  only  one  desirable  and  infallible  alter- 
native: the  international  policy  of  freedom  of  mutual  services 


and  complete  equality  of  opportunities;  for  the  national  "will  of 
power"  the  only  conceivable  substitute  is  the  international 
"Will  of  Equity."  Therefore,  not  a  "league  of  nations"  for 
the  enforcement  of  peace,  but  a  "Concert  of  Nations"  for  the 
establishment  of  economic  liberty  and  equity  is  the  safe  democratic 
alternative  of  the  "Balance  of  Power."  An  international  com- 
munity of  interests  is  the  natural  and  definite  substitute  for 
hegemony. " 

Have  Democracies  never  waged  wars,  never  made  conquests, 
never  proved  Imperialist?  It  will  no  more  be  sufficient  for 
democratic  nations  to  declare  themselves  peacefully  inclined;  it 
has  become  necessary  for  them  to  give  one  another  and  the  whole 
World  the  practical  proof  of  their  desire  for  peace  by  creating  the 
natural  condition  making  peace  desirable  and  possible  for  all 
nations — by  establishing  the  natural  and  universal  basis  of  peace. 

To  those  who  have  a  justified  horror  of  an  autocratic  Pax 
Germanica,  who  do  not  want  a  Pax  Britannica — nor  wish  for  a 
Pax  Americana — there  remains  one  hope:  that  of  the  advent  of 
the  democratic  Pax  Economica. 

Pax  Economica,  solving  word,  saving  truth,  necessary 
asset  of  Democracy,  new  departure  in  the  History  of  Mankind ! 

6.    ARMAGEDDON  AND  MADNESS 

"  Where  there  is  no  vision,  the  people  perish. " 
"Blind  leaders  of  the  blind. " 

But  all  nations  appear  to  be  waging  this  Armageddon  with 
the  view  of  establishing  among  themselves  a  system  of  accen- 
tuated privileges  and  mutual  economic  exclusions,  which  more 
than  ever  will  make  for  desire — and  may  be  for  real  necessity — of 
conquest  and  hegemony.  Brought  about  by  Monopolism,  this 
seems  to  be  a  war  waged  by  Monopolists  against  other  Monopolists 
for  the  sake  of  more  future  Monopolism.  Not  entirely  unconscious 
of  the  inevitable  result  of  their  projected  policy,  the  "Protec- 
tionists" of  all  countries  urge  "preparedness"  for  future  wars. 
Meanwhile  the  peoples  are  fighting  to  death  for  the  preservation 
of  an  error — for  the  continuation  of  the  most  formidable  of  all 
international  errors;  they  are  fighting  "to  a  finish"  for  the  accen- 
tuation of  the  very  cause  of  their  fighting.  Among  the  statesmen 
and  the  great  politicians  of  Europe  no  one  yet  seems  to  realize  this 
monstrous  stupidity  of  the  international  situation. 

68 


Voltaire  never  could  have  expected  such  a  gigantic  and 
fearful  confirmation  of  his  oft-repeated  contention  that  "with 
pearls  and  diamonds  common-sense  is  on  earth  the  most  precious 
but  also  the  rarest  of  all  things. " 

Perhaps  the  explanation  of  the  present  situation  of  the  World 
is  to  be  found  in  the  "  quos  vult  perdere  Jupiter  prius  dementat  "- 
it  seems  as  if  the  gods  had  enough  of  the  protectionist  stupidity 
and  immorality  and  as  if,  having  resolved  the  destruction  of  the 
peoples,  they  had  begun  by  making  their  leaders  and  rulers  mad. 

7.    THE  REVOLT  OF  TRUTH  AGAINST  ERROR 

And  ye  improvident  business  men,  foolish  politicians,  weak- 
minded  "  leaders  of  thought, "  after  three  years  of  this  terrific  lesson 
of  things,  do  you  not  see  yet  the  real  cause  and  the  deep  significance 
of  this  war? 

It  is  a  war  of  conquest  provoked  and  waged  for  possession 
of  more  soil,  for  more  security  and  stability  of  economic  oppor- 
tunities, by  a  nation  which,  not  without  reason,  complained  of 
not  having  her  "place  in  the  sun."  Why?  Because  the  occupa- 
tion of  the  countries  by  the  nations  threatened  to  be  more  and 
more  coupled  with  the  monopolization  of  the  opportunities  which 
they  offer;  for  the  exchange  of  the  products  of  the  lands  was  not 
free,  and  continually  threatened  to  become  less  and  less  free. 
Through  division  of  labor  and  through  exchange,  the  opportunities 
and  the  products  of  the  earth  are  and  must  remain  the  gifts  of 
God  to  the  whole  of  human  kind.  Short  of  this,  the  law  of  the 
"survival  of  the  fittest"  obtains.  Thus  men  must  co-operate — 
or  fight. 

It  is  true  that  the  complaining  nation  was  herself  the  worst 
foe  of  liberty,  international  equity  and  true  human  progress. 
But  in  its  hideous  fear  and  hate  of  freedom,  in  its  monstrous 
selfishness  and  greed,  in  its  ignoble  exploitation  of  its  ignorant 
"protected"  people,  a  protectionist  and  plutocratic  Autocracy  is  a 
consistent  organization.  Whereas,  internationally  nor  nationally, 
a  "protectionist  Democracy"  is  not  a  Democracy.  At  least  it 
will  and  cannot  be  a  lasting  Democracy;  it  sooner  or  later  will  end 
in  war  or  revolution — or  in  both. 

No  ideals  of  world  domination,  moreover,  would  have  suffi- 
ciently developed  in  Autocracies,  no  aggressive  influences  and 
interests  therein  would  have  become  powerful  and  daring  enough 
for  precipitating  their  peoples  and  the  World  into  this  catastrophic 


abyss,  if  Democracies  had  shown  to  the  misled  peoples  of  Autocracy 
the  ways  of  international  freedom,  equity,  progress  and  true 
civilization.  Have  Democracies  given  such  distinguished  ex- 
amples? Have  they  not  rather,  all  with  the  Autocracies,  more  or 
less  sunk  into  a  contemptible  bourgeois-Plutocracy — with  its 
present  international  and  coming  national  consequences? 

This  war  is  a  revolt  of  the  invincible  nature  of  things  and  the 
insuperable  force  of  truth  against  the  errors  and  falsities  of  the 
international  policy  of  all  nations.  When  its  real  cause  and  deep 
significance  are  understood  by  the  peoples,  there  will  be  no  more 
place  for  international  hatred,  but  only  for  mutual  reproaches  of 
ignorance  and  error.  Reproaches  specially  bitter  and  deserved 
will  be  addressed  to  the  "leaders  of  throught"  and  to  the  " great 
Statesmen. "  The  false  prophets  of  Pacifism,  of  Bellicism  and  of 
Protectionism  will  be  cursed  and  stoned  and  the  preachers  and 
singers  of  hate  will  be  despised  and  ridiculed. 


8.    THE  PEACE  OF  WISDOM  AND  LOVE 

Thus  it  is  seen  that  for  the  reign  of  Justice  and  Peace  it  is 
not  requisite  that  human  nature  be  reformed.  If  it  were  so, 
humanity  would  indeed  have  a  hopeless  future.  Men  are  not 
naturally  wicked.  On  the  contrary  they  are  naturally  social  and 
inclined  to  mutual  sympathy.  But  they  are  naturally  ignorant. 
Humanity  has  originated  and  men  are  born  in  ignorance.  They 
continue  to  behave  unjustly  one  with  another  (in  most  cases  think- 
ing that  they  behave  justly)  because  they  have  not  yet  the  know- 
ledge of  what  is  just  and  unjust.  Behaving  unjustly,  they  create 
insecurity  among  themselves.  And  then  they  behave  wickedly 
(they  lie,  they  defraud,  they  hate,  they  destroy,  they  kill)  in  order 
to  subsist  and  survive  in  the  insecurity  which  their  ignorance  has 
created. 

Wars  and  revolutions  are  the  outcome  of  international  and 
social  unintentional  injustice  much  more  than  of  international  and 
social  wickedness.  Mankind  lacks,  the  world  wants  wisdom  much 
more  than  goodness.  Civilization  could  not  be  promoted  by  good 
and  igornant  feelings;  it  must  be  saved  and  furthered  by  intelli- 
gence. "  Ignorance  is  the  curse  of  God,  knowledge  is  the  wing 
which  shall  bring  Humanity  to  Heaven." 

70 


Knowledge  of  international  and  social  truth  and  justice, 
creating  security  and  peace,  and  permitting  the  fulfilment  of  human 
spiritual  Finalities,  can  only  be  found  in  the  study  of  the  laws  of 
Nature,  which  are  the  living  and  ever  present  expression  of  the 
Will  of  God. 

The  fundamental  natural  ethical  law  is  that  of  freedom  to 
produce  and  to  exchange,  permitting  all  men  and  all  nations  to 
"make  their  living"  and  to  develop  peacefully  in  prosperity — to 
"multiply  and  replenish  the  earth." 

When  men  know  and  observe  that  natural  and  divine  funda- 
mental law  of  the  real  Fatherhood  of  God  and  Brotherhood  of 
Man,  they  will  be  permitted  to  live  in  deserved  peace 
and  ultimately  in  love — but  never  before. 

9.    THE  WHOLE  PACIFIST  "SECRET" 

With  the  exception  of  a  few  mystics  and  idealists  (who 
deserve  some  sympathy  and  even  respect)  there  is  practically  no 
individual  on  earth  who  in  his  private  life  does  not,  as  a  natural 
necessity,  accord  to  his  "economics"  a  primary  importance. 
Nobody,  however,  seems  to  realize  that  this  care  is  even  more 
legitimate  and  unavoidable  on  the  part  of  nations — whose 
security  depends  on  economic  development  and  whose  rulers, 
unlike  private  men,  have  no  right  to  be  disinterested,  unforeseeing, 
unfarsighted. 

Under  the  system  of  international  free-trade,  the  economic 
opportunities,  possibilities  of  development  and  "places  in  the  sun" 
being  worldwide,  would  for  all  nations,  great  and  small,  be  brought 
to  their  maximum  and  be  equal.  International  justice  and  security 
would  be  practically  complete.  International  Peace  would  have 
its  true  permanent  foundation.  Such  is  the  whole  pacifist  "secret " 
which  Nature  and  God  want  men  to  discover. 

Humanity,  like  a  child,  should  be  led  by  the  hand  up  to  the 
screen  which,  by  the  will  of  the  Protectionists  and  with  the 
consent  of  the  Pacifists,  hides  from  its  eyes  that  fundamental  and 
simple  Truth.  When  the  screen  shall  be  raised,  men  will  not 
immediately  thoroughly  understand  what  they  see.  But  they 
will  know  that  there  exists  a  comforting,  hopegiving  and  consoling 
thing  which  hitherto  has  been  hidden  from  them.  They  will 
henceforth  dream,  think,  discuss,  and  after  some  time  they  will 
"understand. "  They  will  understand  what  a  great  crime  against 
mankind  is  Protectionism. 

71 


io.    THE  ARTICLE  FIRST  or  THE  TREATY  OF  ECONOMIC  PEACE 

"Instead  of  exclusive  combinations,  I  want  to  see  universal  co- 
operation." 

"America  shall  stand  for  the  just  conception  and  basis  of  peace, 
for  the  competition  of  merit  and  for  the  generous  rivalry  of  liberty. " 

"America  came  into  existence,  my  fellow  citizens,  not  in  order  to 
show  to  the  world  the  most  notable  example  of  accumulation  of  material 
wealth  but  to  show  the  way  to  Mankind  in  every  part  of  the  World  to 
justice  and  freedom  and  liberty. " — WOODROW  WILSON. 

Europe,  and  with  her  the  rest  of  the  World,  can  be  internationally 
and  socially  saved,  civilization  can  be  preserved,  only  if  a  great 
Statesman,  equal  to  the  emergency  and  opportunity  of  the  times,  as  a 
Redemptor,  ready  momentarily  to  sacrifice  his  popularity  and  even 
his  reputation  for  the  service  of  Mankind,  resolves  to  put  an  end 
to  the  international  enterprises  of  greed,  injustice  and  spoliation 
served  by  ignorance. 

All  peoples  of  the  World  ought  to  be  told  and  taught  that 
no  real  and  true  "solution"  of  the  international  problem,  no 
international  security,  no  durable  peace,  no  permanent  liberation 
of  smaller  nationalities,  no  true  freedom  of  the  seas,  no  future 
disarmament,  no  safety  for  democracy,  can  be  hoped  for  except 
through  the  general  adoption  of  an  international  policy  of  economic 
justice  and  morality  based  on  the  principle  of  international 
freedom  of  economic  intercourse  and  services. 

No  success  of  peace  efforts  or  negotiations  will  be  in  sight  so 
long  the  nations  in  conflict  have  not  in  principle  agreed  on  this 
article  First  of  any  peace-treaty :  Germany  to  reduce  immediately 
her  customs  duties,  say  to  50%  of  what  they  are  at  present; 
Great  Britain  to  remain  free-trade;  all  nations  to  adopt  for 
the  future  a  policy  of  freer  trade  and  of  ultimate  complete 
free-trade;  all  colonies  of  the  World  to  be  opened,  under  the 
system  of  equality  of  economic  opportunities,  to  the  commerce 
of  all  nations  of  the  World. 


72 


Two  Protectionist  Fallacies, 

widely  propagated  in  all  countries  and  specially  mischievous  in  the 
United  States  (to  the  point  of  possibly  inducing  many  people  to  fear  an 
"economic  peace!")  need,  in  this  place,  an  answer.  We  therefore  beg  to 
reproduce  here  some  passages  already  met  in  the  foregoing  pages,  to  which 
we  shall  add  some  short  considerations: 

Tariffs,  in  all  countries,  have  been  instituted  in  order  to 
encourage  and  protect  capital  engaged  in  industries.  They  now 
everywhere  protect  high  selling  prices  and  high  manufacturing 
profits.  But,  in  all  countries  (be  it  noted)  they  are  continued  for 
the  "  protection  of  labor  against  the  cheap  foreign  labor  products. " 
Except  in  England,  where  labor  stands  for  free-trade,  the  workmen 
are  happy  to  be  so  well  cared  for.  "  I  protect  my  cows, "  says  the 
farmer.  "I  know  why  I  do  this,  but  the  cows  do  not."  So  is  it 
explainable  that,  with  the  consent  of  the  .  .  workmen  and  the 
gradual  auto-suggestion  of  the  .  .  farmers,  Protection  has  become 
for  most  peoples  an  economic  credo — which  indeed  in  the  future 
will  be  considered  as  the  most  mischievous  and  widest  spread 
superstition  known  in  the  history  of  men. 

i)  It  is  untrue  that  Protectionism,  preventing  importation 
and  making  for  a  self  sustained  people,  is  a  source  of  higher  wages 
and  a  factor  of  a  higher  standard  of  living;  on  the  contrary  Pro- 
tectionism tends  to  lower  both  and  it  is  free  exchange  only  which 
can  have  such  favorable  results.  All  imported  things  are  paid 
for  by  equal  values  of  exported  things;  therefore,  to  begin  with, 
importation  does  not  and  cannot  reduce  home  production,  demand 
of  labor  and  wages.  But  prevention  of  importation  through 
protective  tariffs  (i)  narrows  markets  and  (2)  causes  the  parasitical 
establishment  and  prosperity  of  artificial  industries,  these  then 
taking  the  place  of  natural  industries,  for  which,  if  free,  the  possi- 
bilities and  prospect  of  development  would  be  far  greater  than 
those  of  the  protected  and  artificial  industries.  Therefore  tariffs 
and  the  self-sustaining  system  make  for  lower,  whereas  free- 
trade  makes  for  higher  home  production,  demand  for  labor  and 
wages.  The  cost  of  living  being  necessarily  higher  under  the  tariff 
regime,  we  are  allowed  to  state  that  Protectionism  tends  to  reduce 
both  wages  and  standard  of  life  whereas  freedom  of  exchange  tends 
to  increase  both  of  them. 

73 


Of  course,  a  nation,  whatever  may  be  the  number  and  the 
enterprise  of  its  inhabitants,  has  a  limited  capacity  of  industry; 
amongst  its  possible  undertakings  it  must  choose  the  most  profit- 
able, and  it  is  a  matter  of  simple  common  sense  that  such  are  those 
industries  which  are  best  appropriate  to  the  nature  of  the  country, 
and  that  these  industries  want  only  freedom,  i.  e.,  a  natural 
condition  for  birth,  growth,  health  and  prosperity.  If  wages  are 
found  to  be  high  in  a  protectionist  country  it  is  because  of  these 
natural  industries,  because  of  the  natural  opportunities  and  riches 
offered  by  the  country,  because  of  the  intelligence  and  labor 
energy  of  its  inhabitants,  because  of  freedom  of  exchange  within 
its  own  borders  and  despite  the  protectionist  barriers  put  against 
the  exchange  of  services  with  the  outer  world.  How  could 
barriers  and  isolation  create  wealth  and  prosperity?  How  could 
co-operation  and  mutual  services  not  create  them? 

Undefeatable,  the  Protectionists  will  say:  national  self- 
support,  which  requires  Protection,  is  necessary  for  the  case  of  war. 
We  answer:  exactly;  for  with  them  war  will  sooner  or  later  be 
inevitable;  whereas,  with  international  free  division  of  labor  and 
exchange  of  mutual  economic  services,  the  result  would  be  a 
double  " disaster" — free-trade  and  peace. 

We  think  it  useful  to  suggest  here  that,  with  freedom  of 
exchange,  fair  opportunities  for  the  making  of  their  living  would 
be  afforded  to  all  peoples  at  home,  without  their  being  obliged,  or 
powerfully  incited,  by  poverty,  to  leave  their  countries,  thus 
disturbing  the  labor  markets  of  other  nations  and  complicating 
their  problems.  Free  intercourse  is  the  natural  solution  of  this 
problem.  Freedom  is  nature  of  things,  is  harmony,  is  peace.  It 
is  the  obstacles  which  we  oppose  to  freedom  that  create  our 
difficulties. 

2)  It  is  of  the  utmost  importance  to  note  furthermore  that 
Protectionist  customs  duties  represent  the  worst  and  the  most 
exhausting  method  of  raising  revenue  for  the  State.  Home 
producers  of  articles  taxed  are  thereby  enabled  to  extort  from 
the  general  body  of  consumers  a  sum  which  may  be  and  generally 
is  many  times  larger  than  any  possible  revenue  which  would  accrue 
to  the  State.  The  higher  the  customs  duties  the  less  the  State 
receives  (by  reason  of  diminishing  volume  of  importation)  and 
the  more  the  tax  levied  by  manufacturers  on  consumers  is  raised 
(by  raising  the  prices  of  their  products) ;  the  more  also,  by  reason 
of  general  dearness,  will  the  expenses  of  the  State  suffer  increase, 
even  to  the  length  of  absorbing  the  greatest  part  of  receipts  from 

74 


customs.  Thus  the  "revenue"  goes  to  private  profits.  Attempts 
to  create  important  revenues  by  means  of  Protectionist  customs 
duties  are  condemned  to  failure.  They  will  end  in  revolution. 

Moderate  "revenue  tariffs"  of  course  are  less  harmful;  they 
work  moderately  for  bad  distribution  of  wealth — and  ultimate 
revolution. 

Any  system  of  raising  State  revenues,  whatever  its  defective- 
ness  may  be  imagined  to  be,  is  preferable  to  customs  duties. 
The  only  "merit"  of  this  system  is  that  it  makes  it  possible  to 
raise  taxes  without  the  taxed  people's  knowledge  and  consent — the 
greatest  error  and  peril  for  a  Democracy. 


75 


Part  IV 


THE  TREATY  OF  ECONOMIC  PEACE 


"  The  making  of  peace  is  to  be  desired  and  to  be  regarded 
as  a  blessing,  when  it  can  insure  us  against  the  suspicious 
designs  of  our  neighbors,  when  it  creates  no  new  danger 
and  brings  the  promise  of  future  tranquillity.  But  if  the 
making  of  peace  is  to  produce  the  very  opposite  of  all  this, 
then,  for  all  its  deceptive  title,  it  is  no  better  than  the  con- 
tinuation of  a  ruinous  war." — GUICCIARDINI. 

"No  Treaty  of  Peace  is  worthy  of  its  name,  if  contained 
therein  are  the  hidden  germs  of  a  future  war." — KANT, 
Essay  on  Perpetual  Peace. 

"Only  an  economic  peace  can  prepare  the  ground  for  the 
friendly  association  of  the  peoples. " — RESOLUTION  RECENTLY 

VOTED  BY  THE  GERMAN  REICHSTAG. 

Truth  and  Justice,  the  eternal  twin  forces  that  hold  sway 
over  Mankind  will  never  rest  till  men  attain  an  Economic 
Peace. 


July,  1917. 

The  characteristic  feature  and  dominating  fact  of  the  present 
highly  critical  situation  of  the  belligerent  world  is  that  the  various, 
— military,  political  and  economic — consequences  arising  from  a 
defeat  have  developed  to  such  a  point  of  gravity  that  it  has 
for  either  side  become  impossible  even  to  contemplate  submission 
to  the  will  and  power  of  the  enemy.  It  however  and  fortunately 
remains  possible  for  both  sides  to  submit  to  a  principle,  to  surrender 
to  a  truth.  Large  quarters  in  both  " camps"  would  immediately 
declare  their  readiness  for  such  a  surrender;  everywhere  a  favorable 
public  opinion  would  rapidly  become  overwhelming  in  its  favor. 
"For  above  all  things  Truth  beareth  away  the  victory." 

A  "peace  by  understanding"  is  desirable  and  possible — but 
only  if  this  means  a  peace  by  the  understanding  of  truth.  Out  of 
the  international  struggle  have  arisen  a  moral  problem  and  a 
spiritual  necessity.  More  and  more  it  will  appear  that  the  greatest 
and  deepest  misfortunes,  possibly  for  centuries  to  come,  cannot 
be  warded  from  Humanity  unless  an  adequate  solution  is  given 
to  the  problem,  an  adequate  satisfaction  to  the  necessity. 

The  problem  is  that  of  the  fundamental  moral  relations  of 
the  nations — their  economic  relations;  the  necessity  is  that  of 
freedom  and  justice  in  these  fundamental  relations.  By  the 
nature  of  things  our  economic  life  is  our  fundamental  life,  and 
morality  in  the  economic  intercourse  is  the  fundamental  morality. 
Peace  lacks  and  awaits  its  natural  moral  foundation. 

In  their  practical  and  immediate  application,  the  principle 
and  truth  which  are  determining  factors  in  the  following  scheme 
of  settlement,  and  to  which  nations  are  hereby  invited  to  submit, 
find  this  double  expression: 

(1)  a  negative  expression:  this  war  cannot  be  ended  except 
by  the   suppression  of  its  main  motive,  and  guaranty  against 
repetition  cannot  be  obtained  except  through  the  elimination 
of  the  main  cause  of  all  modern  wars — economic  error,  exclusion, 
injustice,  with  the  necessarily  following  jealous,  unhealthy,  mis- 
chievous rivalries; 

(2)  a  positive  expression:  a  treaty  of  peace,  if  it  is  to  be 
lasting,  must,  firstly  and  fundamentally,  be  a  treaty  of  future 
economic  justice  and  security,  that  is  to  say,  of  future  international 

79 


economic  freedom,  equality  of  opportunities,  harmony  of  interests 
and  co-operation — involving  a  fair  distribution  of  colonial  owner- 
ship, leadership,  or  control. 

OUTLINE  OF  THE  TREATY  OF  ECONOMIC  PEACE 

ARTICLE  I 

1)  Great  Britain  to  remain  free  trade. 

2)  Germany  immediately  to  reduce  her  customs 
duties    to    50%    of   what   they    are    at   present    and 
further  to    agree  to  operate  an  annual  reduction  of 
5%  until  customs  duties  are  entirely  removed. 

The  careful  observer  of  the  present  spirit  in  Great  Britain 
knows  that  there  is  no  hope  of  this  country  remaining  free  trade 
if  Germany  does  not  make  a  great  immediate  step  toward  this 
system  of  fairness,  justice,  morality  and  harmony.  A  similar 
step  will  be  required  from  all  other  countries. 

Though  disputable  from  the  view  point  of  economic  wisdom, 
this  state  of  mind  and  attitude  of  the  British  nation  can  and  must 
be  understood  from  a  sentimental  point  of  view.  It  is  too  much 
to  expect  that  one  country  will  give  indefinitely  to  the  world  an 
unfollowed  example  of  international  freedom  and  wisdom. 

3)  All     other     nations     to     pledge     themselves 
gradually  to  reduce  their  customs  duties  to  50%  of 
what  they  are  at  present  by  annual  reductions  of  5% 
during  the  10  years  following  the  signature  of  the  peace 
treaty. 

Results  and  example  will  do  the  rest  and  insure  future  further 
reductions  and  ultimate  freedom  of  international  intercourse. 
Discussion  and  enlightenment  on  this  great  subject  of  the  connec- 
tion of  protection  and  war  and  of  free  trade  and  peace  will  insure 
the  necessary  progress. 

ARTICLE  II 

All  colonies  of  the  World  to  be  opened  on  terms  of 
absolute  equality  of  opportunities  to  trade  and  general 
economic  activities  of  all  nations. 

Canada,  Australia,  New  Zealand  and  South  Africa  to  be 
regarded  in  this  respect  as  independent  States  and  not  as 
"colonies." 

80 


Asia-Minor,  Persia,  Egypt,  Morocco,  China,  Manchuria  and 
Siberia  to  be  regarded  as  "colonies." 

All  nations  to  pledge  themselves  not  to  offer  or  to  accept 
any  preferential  or  differential  economic  treatment. 

ARTICLE  III 

As  a  preamble  to  this  article,  we  venture  to  suggest  that 
every  forward  and  wealthy  nation  has  the  right  to  claim  and  the 
duty  to  accept  an  honorable  share  in  the  control  or  leadership  of 
the  backward  peoples  and  countries  in  the  ways  of  liberty  and  of 
service  for  general  human  interest.  For  the  former  scramble 
of  swine  for  everything  in  sight  this  article  substitutes  a  gentle- 
manly division  of  "mine,  thine  and  ours"  between  all  nations. 
No  more  then  would  the  terrors  of  national  power,  autocracy  and 
world  domination  overshadow  the  future  of  civilization. 

1)  Germany    and    Austria    to    be    allowed    joint 
leadership  in  the  development  of  Asia-Minor. 

If  the  principle  of  future  co-operation  and  equality  of  rights, 
under  the  provisions  and  benefits  of  Article  II,  is  regarded  as 
furnishing  a  guaranty  of  lasting  good-will,  harmony  and  peace — 
and  it  alone  is  in  conformity  with  the  interests  of  the  native 
populations — there  is  no  doubt  that  a  satisfaction  given  to  Ger- 
many and  Austria  in  Asia-Minor  must  be  accepted  as  a  necessary 
integral  part  of  any  treaty  of  peace. 

A  Protectionist  "  Mittel-Europa "  would  be  the  greatest 
conceivable  obstacle  to  future  lasting  peace;  a  free-trade  Mittel- 
Europa  would  be  an  asset  of  peace. 

2)  The  territory  between  Bagdad  (included)  and 
the  Persian  Gulf  to  be  internationalized. 

3)  Russia    and    Great   Britain    to   be    allowed    a 
joint  political  and  economic  influence  in  the  develop- 
ment of  Persia. 

4)  France  to   be   granted   a   political   control   of 
Palestine  and  Syria. 

5)  The  Dardanelles,  the  Bosporus  and  adjoining 
territories  to  be  politically  and  economically  controlled 
by  an  international  board. 

6)  Japan  to  be  granted  the  political  and  economic 
leadership  in  the  development  of  China,  Manchuria 
and  Corea. 

81 


7)  The  Monroe  Doctrine  to  be  recognized   and 
proclaimed  by  all  nations  as  expressing  a  right  and  a 
duty  of  the  United  States. 

8)  The    British,    French,    German,    Belgian    and 
Portuguese  colonies  of  Central  Africa  to  be  united  in 
an   international   State   and   to  be   controlled   by  an 
international  council. 

In  this  international  colony  the  trade  should  be  entirely 
free.  No  customs  duties  would  be  raised.  The  expenses  of  the 
State  should  be  born  by  all  contracting  nations  in  proportion  to 
their  trade  with  the  international  colony.  The  taxation  of  land- 
values  is  highly  commendable  in  this  new  country. 

May  it  be  suggested  that  there  probably  exists  no  better  or 
other  way  (i)  of  opening  Central  Africa  to  civilization  in  the 
interest  of  the  natives  (2)  of  solving  the  eminently  difficult  and  grave 
question  raised  by  the  case  of  the  German  colonies  of  S.  E.  and 
S.  W.  Africa?  These  being  joined  to  the  international  colony,  the 
problem  would  be  solved  satisfactorily  for  all  parties. 

ARTICLE  IV 

Once  fairness  in  dealings,  liberty  of  intercourse,  actual 
equality  of  rights  and  duties,  co-operation  and  morality  are  thus 
proclaimed  and  ensured  between  the  great  nations — but  then 
only — the  problems  affecting  their  military,  political  and  economic 
"greatness"  and  "power"  having  henceforth  lost  their  hitherto 
rationally  dominating  if  not  exclusive  importance — the  following 
burning  questions  can  be  discussed  and  settled  definitely,  finally. 

1)  The  political   and  economic  independence  of 
Belgium  to  be  restored. 

2)  Alsace-Lorraine  to  be   made   an   independent 
and  neutral  State,  but  to  remain,  if  it  chooses,  within 
the  German  Zollverein  (for  10  years  according  to  Art.  i). 

This  solution  is  the  one  responding  to  the  economic  interests 
and  fundamental  needs  as  well  as  probably  to  the  political  wishes 
of  the  great  majority  of  the  population  of  Alsace-Lorraine.  It 
is  also  the  only  one  which  conceivably  could  answer  to  the  wish 
of  "peace  without  annexation"  and  it  is  the  one  eliminating  the 
bone  of  contention  between  Germany  and  France. 

3)  German,  Austrian  and  Russian  Poland  to  be 
made  an  independent  and  parliamentary  State  under 
an  Austrian  Ruler. 

82 


This  solution  gives  the  best  prospect  of  future  welfare  for 
Poland,  which  for  many  reasons  is  not  prepared  to  live  under 
republican  institutions.  Moreover,  it  being  assumed  that  the 
peace-treaty  shall  be  agreed  upon,  and  not  imposed,  it  is  not  easy 
to  conceive  that  Germany  and  Austria  would  consent  to  combine 
their  Polish  provinces  with  the  Russian  Poland  if  there  is  not 
given  to  them  what  they  will  consider  as  a  necessary  guaranty  of 
future  internal  order  for  the  new  State. 

4)  The  independence  and  harmony  of  the  Balkan 
States   to   be   reestablished    and   consolidated,   under 
the  guaranty  of  all  signers  of  the  peace  treaty,  by  a 
freer  economic  intercourse  between  these  States  and 
an  absolutely  free  way  through  for  their  goods. 

5)  Trentino  to  be  given  back  to  Italy. 

6)  Trieste  to  be  made  an  Austrian  free  port. 


ARTICLE  V 

Damages  done  in  the  invaded  countries  during  the 
war  to  be  estimated  by  an  international  commission 
and  reparation  therefor  to  be  paid  within  the  next  10 
years  by  the  belligerent  nations  in  the  following 
proportions: 

Germany  and  Austria 60% 

Great  Britain 10% 

France 10% 

Russia 10% 

United  States 10% 

Such  is  the  only  agreement  which  in  its  principle  conceivably 
can  respond  to  the  wish  of  a  "peace  without  indemnities." 

The  author  of  this  scheme  appeals  to  the  common  sense  and 
to  the  generosity  of  the  United  States  to  accept  this.  Without 
giving  to  this  consideration  a  first  importance  it  is  to  be  noted 
that  the  sacrifice  asked  from  the  United  States  would  scarcely 
be  superior  to  its  expenses  for  one  month  of  war.  Moreover, 
have  not  all  nations  " sinned?"  Have  they  not  all  partaken 
in  the  errors  which  have  brought  about  this  World's  war.  All 
nations  have  to  "take  their  medicine." 

83 


But  there  are  powerful  political  and  moral  considerations, 
which  we  propose  to  leave  to  the  reflections  of  the  citizens  of  this 
great  nation  themselves,  for  their  agreement  to  such  a  settlement. 

What  an  example  in  the  history  of  Mankind!  What  an 
influence,  what  a  prestige  for  this  Republic! 


In  our  statement  on  "The  Economic  Cause  and  Solution  of 
the  European  Crisis"  we  have  said  (page  21)  "that  it  is  extremely 
irrational  and  dangerous  and  moreover  contrary  to  sound  law 
to  conclude  international  agreements  ad  aeternum,  that  is  to 
say,  without  any  limit  of  time.  Such  agreements,  like  all  con- 
tracts, should  be  made  for  a  definite  period,  and  renewable. 
They  will  thus  have  a  greater  precision  of  meaning  and  will 
involve  a  more  formal  moral  obligation.  An  international  treaty 
without  the  stipulation  of  a  period  involves  the  mental  reservation 
"rebus  sic  stantibus." 

For  this  reason  we  suggest  that  the  articles  I,  II,  III  and  IV, 
should  be  agreed  upon  for  a  period  of  35  years  and  shall  be 
renewable  from  term  to  term  either  by  another  agreement  or  by 
simple  "tacit  reconduction. " 

We  beg  to  note  that  by  this  treaty  of  economic  peace — which 
we  hereby  submit  to  the  statesmen — neither  Germany  nor  any 
other  country,  would  enlarge  her  own  and  exclusive  "place  in 
the  sun. "  But  the  whole  World  would  be  made  a  common  and 
secure  place  in  the  sun  for  Germany  as  for  all  other  nations. 
And  this  is  both  the  minimum  that  Germany  has  the  duty  and 
the  maximum  that  she  has  the  right  to  claim.  Her  co-operative 
(political  and  economic)  partnership  in  the  general  development 
of  civilization  would  then  be  as  great  or  as  reduced  as  she  might 
choose  and  her  enlargement  of  partnership  would  involve  no 
danger  or  exclusion  for  others. 

The  true  and  concrete  foundation  of  future  international 
justice,  morality  and  harmony  having  been  laid  by  our  treaty  of 
economic  peace,  no  formal  immediate  convention  needs  to  be 
made  concerning  disarmament  or  limitation  of  land  and  naval 
forces,  concerning  "freedom  of  the  seas, "  autonomy  of  constitutent 
nationalities,  institution  of  international  tribunals,  organization 
of  leagues  of  nations,  and  other  measures  of  similar  kinds.  These 
questions  would  be  found  absolutely  insoluble  at  a  peace  con- 
ference, even  if  this  were  to  last  several  years.  But  they  all  can 
and  will  be  solved  gradually,  satisfactorily,  within  a  relatively 

84 


short  time,1  as  a  natural  consequence  of  the  advent  of  true 
international  right,  order  and  security,  permitting  progress  in 
national  and  international  ideas  and  morals  and,  at  last !  the  reign 
of  international  good  faith  and  good-will  between  the  nations 
and  between  their  rulers. 

The  author  therefore  suggests  the  additional  article: 

ARTICLE  VI 

The  contracting  nations,  who  invite  all  other 
nations  of  the  World  to  join  them,  solemnly  pledge 
themselves  to  call  an  international  convention  to  take 
place  within  three  months  of  the  signature  of  this 
treaty  of  peace,  in  order  to  settle  all  questions  of 
general  and  common  interest  considered  useful  for  the 
future  international  welfare  of  humanity. 


1This  may  mean  5  years  of  diligent  study  and  discussion  by  a  highly 
competent  and  impartial  body,  composed,  not  of  military  and  diplomatic 
representatives  of  the  nations,  but  of  specialists  of  international  science. 
The  resolutions  of  this  body  would  involve  a  new  organization  of  the  world. 
They  should,  of  course,  be  submitted  to,  discussed  and  voted  by,  the  Parlia- 
ments of  the  contracting  nations,  and  this  alone  suffices  for  making  it  im- 
possible that  questions  as  those  named  should  be  decided  upon  at  a  peace 
conference. 

85 


Appendix 


1)  AN  OPEN  LETTER  TO  MR.  WOODROW  WILSON,  PRESIDENT 

OF  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 

2)  A  MESSAGE  ON  "FREE  TRADE  AND  PEACE  TO  THE  SOCIETY 

OF  FRIENDS  AND  OTHER  CHRISTIANS. 

3)  THE  WORLD  AT  WAR  (CONCLUSION)  BY  GEORG  BRANDES. 


Open  Letter 

TO 

MR.  WOODROW  WILSON 
President  of  the  United  States  of  America1 

The  Hague,  3d  of  October,  1914. 

SIR: 

Europe  goes  to  ruin.  Civilization  is  threatened  with  break- 
down. Brave  little  Belgium  is  in  agony.  Judging  by  the  recip- 
rocal attitude  of  the  great  nations  in  conflict,  it  would  seem  that 
they  have  harked  back  to  those  epochs  when  peoples  could  not 
conceive  their  existence  and  prosperity  possible  except  by  the 
suppression  of  the  other  peoples. 

Must  the  horrible  tragedy  be  pursued  to  "a  finish"  as  the 
Statesmen  of  the  great  European  nations  appear  to  consider  it 
necessary?  Must  all  peaceful  hopes  be  abandoned  by  those  who 
amid  the  storm  preserve  intact  their  brain  and  heart?  Is  no 
effort  to  be  put  forth  by  those  possessed  of  authority  sufficiently 
high  to  permit  them  to  exercise  an  influence  on  the  destinies  of 
their  contemporaries? 

As  a  Belgian  citizen,  a  man  of  business  and  in  some  degree  an 
economist,  I  would  ask  you,  Sir,  to  do  me  the  honor  to  weigh  the 
economic  considerations  as  well  as  those  considerations  that 
tend  toward  peace  which  I  venture  to  bring  to  your  notice  in  the 
course  of  the  present  letter.  They  express  opinions  which  for 
some  ten  years  past  I  have  unceasingly  defended,  but  which  are 
widely  removed  from  those  in  vogue  in  all  countries  at  this  present 
hour.  In  propounding  them  anew  to-day  with  the  object  of 
interesting  you  therein,  I  fulfil  what  appears  to  me  to  be  my 
imperative  duty  to  humanity. 

I  appreciate,  Sir,  that  amidst  the  chaos  of  ideas  which  looms 
ahead,  two  peace-making  conceptions,  equally  true  because 
equally  realistic,  should  be  carefully  kept  together  in  view:  the 

1  Published  in  French  by  the  Nieuwe  Rotterdamsche  Couranl  on  the  8th 
of  October.  1914. — Translated  by  the  American  Legation  at  The  Hague 
and  transmitted  for  information  to  the  Department  of  State  at  Washington. 


one,  of  a  peace  imposed  by  arms,  which  could  only  be  temporary; 
the  other,  of  a  definitive  pacification,  to  be  realized  by  means  of 
economic  arrangements  assuring  the  loyal  association  or  co-opera- 
tion of  the  European  peoples. 

The  present  war  will  appear  to  many  a  political  philosopher 
and  historian  as  a  natural  phenomenon  which  came  about 
because  most  peoples  have  persisted  in  gravely  infringing  one  of 
those  great  natural  laws  of  progress  which  express  a  superior  Will. 
Among  these  laws  there  is  none  more  important  or  more 
fundamental  to  civilization  than  that  of  the  practice  of  Exchange 
alike  between  nations  and  between  individuals.  All  material, 
intellectual,  and  moral  progress  of  humanity,  since  its  origin,  is 
directly  or  indirectly  derived  therefrom.  Exchange  is  the  primor- 
dial social  phenomenon;  for,  one  can  no  more  conceive  Society 
without  Exchange  than  Exchange  without  Society.  It  is  therefore 
natural  and  only  logical  that  the  phenomenon  of  exchange  of 
goods  and  services  exercises  a  momentous  influence  on  the  life 
of  the  Society  of  Nations  as  it  does  on  the  internal  destinies  of 
national  collectivities.  To  ignore  the  fundamental  international 
importance  of  Exchange  is  to  be  guilty  of  a  great  error,  a  great 
wrong,  a  great  fault  of  which  most  peoples  and  their  governments 
have  more  and  more  gravely  been  guilty  during  the  last  half 
century. 

Industry  and  commerce,  which  are  comprised  in  exchange  of 
material  services  are  the  most,  if  not  the  only,  effective  means  for 
bringing  nearer  and  finally  uniting  peoples,  because  they  are  its 
primordial,  natural  and  positive  means.  Such  mutual  services 
must  be  permitted  free  development  in  the  interests  of  peace  as 
well  as  of  true  prosperity.  For  harmonizing  feelings  it  is  necessary 
to  harmonize  and  unify  interests.  At  least  the  contrary  ought 
to  have  been  avoided.  Fundamental  interests  cannot  without 
peril  be  dealt  with  in  a  spirit  of  systematic  antagonism;  it  is  so 
between  friends,  even  between  brothers,  how  could  it  not  be 
equally  true  between  peoples? 

Now,  for  the  last  thirty  or  forty  years,  industry  and  com- 
merce, because  of  the  almost  universal  acceptance  and  accentua- 
tion of  the  system  of  reciprocal  exclusion  by  means  of  protective 
customs  duties — and  other  privileges  and  monopolies  connected 
with  Protection — have  but  furnished  grounds  for  jealousy,  discord, 
developing  in  international  hate  and  culminating  in  the  present 
war. 

90 


That  which  has  happened  was  bound  to  happen.  For,  it 
is  in  the  nature  and  consequently  in  the  very  force  of  things  that 
peoples  are  unable  to  live  in  assured  peace  until  they  have  decided 
definitively  to  enter  into  the  state  of  freedom  of  international 
economic  intercourse.  That  will  appear  more  and  more  impera- 
tively true  in  measure  of  the  development  of  industry  and  com- 
merce, which  must  characterize  all  progressive  civilization.  Cobden 
has  said:  "Free  Trade  is  the  best  Peace-maker."  Inspired  by 
him  I  make  bold  to  say :  Free  Trade  will  more  and  more  become  the 
only  Peace-maker. 

The  desire  to  suppress  armies  in  order  to  make  peace  proceeds 
from  an  extraordinary  illusion.  Is  it  not  the  simple  common  sense 
truth  that  it  is  necessary  to  begin  by  creating  international: 
security  in  order  to  be  able  to  suppress  armies?  Now  at  our 
epoch  of  Industrial  development  the  fundamental  condition  of 
international  security  is  equality  of  economic  rights  and  oppor- 
tunities for  all  nations — a  progress  inseparable  from  international 
arrangements  tending  toward  freedom  of  trade.  It  is  along  this1 
line  of  action  that  one  must  seek  and  can  find  the  only  means  for 
the  pacification  of  Europe. 

A  voice  of  high  authority  should  be  raised  in  order  to  make 
the  civilized  world  comprehend  that  the  disastrous  and  terrific 
state  of  things — which  has  been  brewing  for  long  time  past — has 
a  profound  cause,  so  far  nearly  unnoticed,  differing  widely  from 
the  superficial  and  passing  causes  which  everyone  puts  forth. 

The  actual  conflict  has  as  origin,  already  remote,  the  insecure, 
unstable  and  unequal  condition  in  which  practically  every  people 
found  itself  in  what  concerned  its  economic  outlets  and  future. 
This  was  so  because  of  the  possibility,  ever  latent,  of  a  recrudes- 
cence of  the  so-called  "Protectionist"  policy  of  the  nations, 
chiefly  of  the  great  colony-owning  ones.  Not  one  of  these  latter 
nations  avoided  this  threatening  and  perilous  policy  tending  to 
monopoly.  Therefrom  sprang  the  increasing  eagerness  of  every 
nation  to  possess  its  own  exclusive  economic  and  colonial  domain. 
The  will  to  exclude  and  monopolize  engendered  more  will  to 
exclude  and  monopolize. 

Relatively  deprived  of  colonies  (having  arrived  too  late 
to  be  able  to  acquire  her  portion  of  new  territories)  menaced 
occasionally  by  more  or  less  complete  exclusion  from  the  markets 
of  other  nations,  the  great  industrial  and  commercial  nation, 
which  Germany  is,  was  not  willing  to — and  indeed  could  not — 
take  the  risk  of  losing  important  parts  of  her  outlets  and  markets, 


and  she  resolved  to  conquer  that  which  for  many  years  past,  she 
has  designated  her  " place  in  the  sun."  In  our  imperfect,  un- 
completed civilization,  at  once  highly  industrial  and  highly 
militarist,  economic  development  is  the  foundation  of  military 
power  and  consequently  the  condition  of  national  security. 

Herein  lies  the  true  cause  and  the  true  objective  of  the 
increasing  armaments  of  Germany  on  sea  and  land  involving 
increasing  armaments  by  the  other  European  nations. 

Applying  herself  the  detestable  protectionist  system  (even 
more  excessively  than  most  of  the  other  nations,  her  agrarians, 
manufacturers  and  politicians  being  sustained  by  the  narrow  and 
erroneous  teachings  of  the  professors  of  the  "Nationale  Wirt- 
schaft")  Germany  could  not,  reasonably  and  decently,  complain 
of  the  resulting  insecurity  to  herself  of  the  protectionism  of  others. 
She  persevered  in  error  and  wrong  and  continued  to  arm.  And 
such  is  the  formidable  and  persistent  misunderstanding  which 
no  European  statesman  either  dissipated  or  even  understood 
and  which  culminates  in  the  present  catastrophe. 

It  is  not  too  late,  Sir,  to  put  forth  a  supreme  effort  with  the 
object  of  ending  the  devastation  and  carnage  which  are  ruining  and 
dishonoring  Europe  and  humanity.  This  demands  a  great  action, 
a  grand  achievement: 

The  assembling  of  a  conference  in  which  all  nations  of  the 
world  shall  participate  with  the  mew  of  coming  to  an  agreement 
for  the  opening  of  all  colonies  of  all  peoples  to  the  free  commerce 
of  all  peoples. 

This  agreement  must  apply  to  colonies  present  and  future. 

It  will  not  necessarily  signify  the  immediate  abolition  of 
all  customs  duties  in  colonies,  but  certainly  the  immediate  appli- 
cation to  all  nations  of  similar  treatment,  of  economic  equality 
in  all  colonial  markets  of  the  world. 

Such  an  agreement  will  be  equivalent  to  the  internationaliza- 
tion of  the  colonies.  It  will  be  eminently  favorable  to  the  inter- 
ests of  these — above  all  to  the  interests  of  those  that  are 
highly  "protected." 

This  great  act  would  without  doubt  constitute  the  probably 
decisive  step  in  the  direction  of  Free  trade  between  the  mother 
countries  themselves. 

It  is  thus  only,  Sir,  that  humanity  can  hope  for  a  general  and 
definite  peace,  it  is  thus  only  that  it  will  be  possible  to  transform 
the  sword  into  the  ploughshare,  to  recast  cannon  into  anvils  and 
hammers.  Then  only  will  true  civilization  begin. 

92 


If  among  all  peoples,  there  is  a  people  which  has  the  right  to 
ask  that  a  great  pacifist  initiative  should  be  taken  without  delay, 
it  certainly  is  the  Belgian  people  so  hospitable,  so  laborious,  so 
innocent,  and  nevertheless  so  unhappy  and  so  completely  sacrificed. 
Yet,  no  Belgian  implores  pity.  But  all  make  appeal  for  justice — 
to  others  as  to  themselves. 

I  have,  however,  to  declare  that  in  writing  you  this  letter  I 
have  not  intervened  at  the  behest  of  any  person.  I  act  individually 
in  full  consciousness  of  a  duty  to  accomplish  and  in  the  absolute 
conviction  that  I  express  the  most  useful  and  the  highest  truth 
that  can  be  proclaimed  at  the  present  epoch. 

And  finally  I  permit  myself  to  ask  again,  Is  it  possible  that 
humanity  can  contemplate  a  return  to  primitive  epochs  when 
peoples  could  not  conceive  it  possible  to  live  and  to  prosper 
except  by  suppressing  and  mining  other  peoples?  Whereas  it 
is  exactly  the  contrary,  whereas  it  is  loyal  association  and  eco- 
nomic co-operation  of  peoples  which  is  TRUTH  of  a  dazzling 
clearness. 

I  beg  you,  Sir,  to  have  the  goodness  to  accept  the  expression 
of  my  confidence  in  your  kind  attention  and  the  assurance  of  my 
profound  respect. 

(Signed)     HENRI  LAMBERT, 

Manufacturer  in  Charleroi  (Belgium.) 


93 


Free  Trade  and  Peace 

A  MESSAGE  TO  THE  SOCIETY  OF  FRIENDS 

AND  OTHER  CHRISTIANS. 

Friends : 

A  few  months  after  the  beginning  of  the  war  I  was  present 
at  one  of  the  London  meetings  of  the  Society  of  Friends,  where, 
for  the  first  time  in  my  life,  I  heard  serious  discussion  of  " Non- 
resistance  to  War."  I  left  the  meeting  convinced  that  the 
Friends  were  right  in  their  view  of  the  religious  principles  involved 
in  the  question  of  war  and  peace,  but  that  they  had  not  the  same 
clear  conception  of  the  practical  application  of  these  principles.  It 
is  still  my  judgment  that  " non-resistance"  is  not  a  short  and 
efficient  way  to  avoid  wars  and  secure  peace. 

In  all  countries,  and  for  a  very  long  time,  practically  all  men 
will  lack  the  intelligence,  wisdom  and  virtues  needed  to  vanquish 
unloosed  war  forces  by  the  influence  of  the  Christian  spirit.  If 
a  strong  minority  of  " non-resistants"  should  now  exist  in  one 
nation,  that  nation  would  be  in  danger  of  being  enslaved;  it  would 
possibly  disappear.  It  is  our  conception  of  international  life  and 
duties  in  time  of  peace  which  must  be  rendered  Christian.  This 
can  result  only  from  knowledge  of  international  Christian  truth; 
not  from  vague  international  Christian  " feelings." 

As  long  as  the  custom  of  war  and  conquest  shall  last,  it 
will  be  necessary  to  oppose  offensive  by  defensive  forces.  "Con- 
scientious objection"  most  probably  lacks  its  necessary  rational 
motive  and  moral  justification.  For,  sociologically  and  histori- 
cally, the  liberty  and  the  rights  of  the  individual  always  have 
depended  and  must  necessarily  depend  on  the  security  of  the  group. 
Were  the  nation  deprived  of  its  freedom,  there  could  be  no  freedom 
of  the  individual.  No  claim  of  individual  rights  therefore  can 
prevail  against  the  need  of  national  security. 

Only  the  suppression  of  war  itself  will  remove  the  necessity  of 
resistance  to  war.  This  does  not  mean  that  the  brutal  forces  of 
war  will  be  finally  conquered  by  superior  brutal  forces.  War  can 
no  more  be  definitely  defeated  by  war,  than  oppression  can  be 
defeated  by  oppression,  injustice  by  injustice,  evil  by  evil.  In 

94 


that  sense  Friends  are  right  in  teaching  that  men  will  never  con- 
quer inferior  material  forces,  finally  ending  war,  unless  they 
oppose  to  them  a  superior  spiritual  power.  What  spiritual  power? 

"Non-resistance"  is  real  and  superior  spirituality  because 
its  attitude  is  that  of  love.  But  is  humanity  ripe  for  "inter- 
national love?"  Moreover,  is  there  not  an  intermediate  stage  of 
justice,  which  must  precede  that  of  love  in  all  human  relations? 
International  justice  alone  appears  to  be  capable  of  overcoming 
war  by  preventing  the  outburst  of  aggressive  or  resentful  national 
forces.  Against  the  brutal  forces  of  war  Christians  must  oppose 
the  spiritual  powers  of  international  justice. 

The  true  Christian  attitude  is  one  of  spiritual  combat,  and, 
in  the  matter  of  war,  there  is  possible  only  this  satisfactory  com- 
promise between  non-resistance  and  resistance:  combat  against 
international  injustice.  Such  is  the  only  short,  efficient,  practical 
way  of  establishing  peace  on  earth,  good  will  among  nations. 
"The  fruit  of  righteousness  is  peace,  and  the  effect  of  righteousness, 
quietness  and  assurance  forever. " 

Now,  of  what  does  justice  in  international  relations  consist? 
What  must  be  its  main  characteristics  in  the  present  historical 
period? 

Religious  wars  ceased  in  1648  with  the  Treaty  of  Munster. 
Dynastic  wars,  arising  from  monarchical  rivalries  and  ambitions, 
are  probably  a  thing  of  the  past.  Among  the  causes  of  the  present 
war  were  hostile  international  feelings,  racial  passions,  inferior 
national  "ideals,"  interests  of  castes;  but  their  influence  was 
important  only  because  allied  with  antagonistic  economic  interests 
of  the  nations  or,  at  least,  of  large  sections  of  the  nations.  Modern 
wars  have  been  caused,  are  caused,  are  likely  to  be  caused,  by 
huge  international  economic  contests,  strivings  for  advantage, 
for  privilege.  The  problem  of  the  suppression  of  war  being  a 
problem  of  suppression  of  international  economic  conflicts,  inter- 
national peace  depends  upon  international  economic  justice. 

The  question  now  arises:  What  is  economic  international 
justice? 

Increasingly,  for  nearly  half  a  century,  the  development  of 
industries  and  commerce  has  been  the  main  motive,  the  real 
objective,  of  international  politics.  No  longer  are  nations  strongly 
moved  by  desire  of  conquest  or  domination  for  satisfaction  of 
pride  and  lust  of  power.  In  our  day  wars  have  economic  pur- 
pose and  motive;  territories  are  conquered,  empires  are  built 
up  with  a  view  to  economic  expansion,  with  desire  for  security, 

95 


stability  of  outlets  and  markets  and,  unfortunately,  for  industrial 
and  commercial  privilege  and  monopoly.  Not  yet  do  men  and 
nations  realize  that  expansion,  prosperity,  security  and  stability 
for  their  own  trade  do  not  involve  loss  of  such  accompanying 
advantages  for  the  trade  of  others.  Man's  thought  is  still  one  of 
aloofness,  exclusion,  privilege,  monopoly — i.e.,  international  eco- 
nomic injustice.  It  should  be  of  co-operation,  free  competition, 
equality,  mutual  services  rendered  by  exchange — i.e.,  INTER- 
NATIONAL ECONOMIC  JUSTICE. 

In  the  unjust,  un-Christian  economic  ideas  generally  accepted 
lies  the  actual  cause  of  international  economic  conflicts  and  of  wars. 
This  wrong  conception  must  be  removed.  The  task  should  be 
easy,  for  there  is  no  sounder  truth  than  this:  in  international 
trade,  liberty  means  prosperity  for  all  nations.  In  international 
trade,  liberty  is  the  true  national  good,  the  true  international 
justice,  the  true  Christian  policy.  Every  nation  desires  other 
nations  to  adopt  toward  itself  freedom  of  trade;  ought  not  nations 
to  do  to  others  as  they  would  be  done  by,  and  avoid  treating 
others  in  a  way  that  they  themselves  would  not  wish  to  be  treated? 

As  Nature  has  distributed  diversely  and  unequally  the  many 
things  needed  by  men,  it  is  clear  that  exchange — and,  con- 
sequently, free  exchange — among  nations  accords  with  the  Divine 
Will,  as  a  primordial,  imperative  law  of  justice  and  progress, 
securing  to  men  in  various  parts  of  the  world  their  share  of  the 
natural,  divine  gifts  needed  for  physical  and,  therefore,  for  intel- 
lectual and  spiritual  welfare.  Does  not  the  growth  of  superior 
aspirations  require  leisure  for  thought,  and  is  not  this  dependent 
upon  the  easy  satisfaction  of  physical  needs? 

The  enactment  of  the  law  of  international  economic  justice 
is  of  the  utmost  importance  to  the  smaller  nations  whose  limited 
territories  compel  them  to  specialize  in  production,  emphasizing 
the  need  of  free  exchange.  Generosity  and  friendliness  toward 
smaller  nations,  as  well  as  well-understood  self  interest  of  the 
greater  nations,  ought  to  be  manifested  primarily  by  freedom  of 
economic  intercourse. 

I  submit  this  proposition:     GOD  HAS  NOT  GIVEN  THE  LANDS 

AND  THE  SEAS  TO  THE  NATIONS,  BUT  TO  HUMANITY.  NATIONS 
WILL  NEVER  ENJOY  GOODWILL  AND  PEACE  UNTIL  THE  DIVINE 

WILL  BE  RESPECTED  AND  FULFILLED.  This  does  not  mean  that 
every  human  being  must  be  at  home  everywhere  on  the  globe, 
and  that  political  frontiers  of  nations  should  be  abolished  (an 
unnatural,  unprogressive  idea);  but  it  does  mean  that  economic 

96 


frontiers  must  be  abolished,  i.e.,  that  the  "open-door"  for  free 
exchange  of  things  and  services  must  be  universal,  every  man 
thus  finding  at  home,  in  his  own  country,  among  his  own  people, 
the  best  possible  opportunities  for  making  a  living.  Thus, 
all  human  kind  through  co-operation  may  progress  materially, 
intellectually,  spiritually;  therefore  in  harmony  and  peace.  " Seek 
ye  first  the  Kingdom  of  God  and  His  justice,  and  all  these  things 
shall  be  added  unto  you. " 

Pascal  said  that  "as  it  has  not  been  possible  to  insure  that 
what  was  mighty  should  be  just,  it  has  been  insured  that  what 
was  just  should  be  mighty."  The  war  powers  of  the  mighty 
nations  will  be  vanquished  only  by  the  almighty  spiritual  power 
of  international  justice,  the  necessary,  practical,  fundamental 
characteristic  of  which  is  liberty  in  exchange  of  economic  services. 

I  respectfully  suggest  that  the  Society  of  Friends  through- 
out the  world  transform  their  negative,  passive  attitude  into 
a  positive,  active  one;  that  they  substitute  for  "Non-resistance 
to  War"  a  vigorous  and  uncompromising  resistance  to  the  chief 
cause  of  war,  viz.:  the  un-Christian  international  policy  of  ob- 
struction to  mutual  services,  miscalled  "Protection."  I  suggest 
to  them  that  International  Free  Trade,  foreshadowing  the  reign 
of  morality,  harmony  and  goodwill  among  nations,  is  a  great 
and  true  Christian  peace  ideal  worth  striving  for,  worth  "fight- 
ing" for. 


97 


The  World  at  War 

(CONCLUSION) 
OF  GEORG  BRANDES 

Would  that  many  prominent  men  and  women  in  England 
and  in  all  parts  of  the  world  could  be  induced  to  cease  their 
everlasting  discussion  as  to  who  is  responsible  for  the  war,  and 
upon  whom  the  punishment  should  fall,  and  would  concentrate 
their  efforts  on  solving  the  only  real  and  vital  question,  that  of 
finding  a  way  out  of  this  hell!  To  it  the  words  of  Macbeth  may 
truly  be  applied: 

" Oh  horror,  horror,  horror!     Tongue  nor  heart 
Cannot  conceive  nor  name  thee!" 

The  belligerents  are  insatiable.  At  the  Conference  of  Paris 
they  decided  to  continue  the  commercial  war  when  the  clash  of  arms 
is  over.  Insanity  seems  fated  to  reign  forever. 

The  war  must  end  with  an  agreement,  and  as  the  real  nature  of 
the  war  is  economic,  this  agreement  must  be  economic.  England, 
as  a  nation  of  free  trade,  has  shown  the  world  the  way.  A  tariff 
agreement  will  be  unavoidable,  and  both  parties  will  have  to  make 
concessions.  Greater  trade  freedom  must  be  sought  until  uni- 
versal free  trade  is  reached  at  last. 

A  man  from  the  country  which  has  suffered  most  in  the  war,  a 
Belgian  business  man  from  Charleroi,  M.  Henri  Lambert,  points  to 
the  only  sane  solution.  He  claims  that  the  only  wise  and  far- 
sighted  policy  regarding  a  tariff,  is  to  be  just  and  to  allow  even  the 
enemy  to  live.  There  can  be  no  lasting  improvement  in  European 
conditions  unless  the  party  seeking  peace  is  forced  to  abandon 
or  at  least  greatly  reduce  its  protective  tariff.  For  this,  complete 
and  equitable  reciprocity  should  be  granted.  The  instrument  of 
economical  competition  called  "dumping,"  for  which  the  English 
so  blame  the  Germans,  can  only  be  done  away  with  by  means  of 
the  open  door. 

A  tariff  agreement  will  be  necessary  even  in  the  improbable 
event  of  one  party  winning  an  overwhelming  victory,  for  which  a 
dozen  millions  or  more  men  will  have  to  be  sacrificed  on  the  battle- 
field and  in  the  homes. 


Suppose  that  the  victor,  as  suggested  at  the  economic  confer- 
ence in  Paris,  should  decide  to  discriminate  against  the  vanquished 
by  means  of  unequal  tariffs.  The  vanquished  nation  would 
thereby  be  dragged  down  to  a  lower  level,  and  humanity  would 
be  set  back  to  the  days  when  whole  nations  were  enslaved ! 

The  vanquished,  under  such  pressure,  would  have  but  one 
passion:  revenge  and  redress!  They  would  turn  to  account  any 
disagreement  arising  among  the  victors,  and  within  fifty  years 
would  succeed  in  breaking  loose.  Political  alliances  do  not  last 
half  a  century. 

The  peace  of  Europe  in  the  future  depends  on  free  trade. 
Free  trade,  as  Cobden  has  said,  is  the  greatest  peace-maker.  It 
seems,  moreover,  the  only  possible  peace-maker. 

In  ancient  times,  people  put  out  the  eyes  of  the  old  horses  set 
to  drag  the  mill  stones  round  and  round.  So  to-day,  the  unfor- 
tunate nations  of  Europe,  blinded  to  reality,  under  the  yoke, 
believing  themselves  free,  grind  the  mills  of  war. 


99 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  LAST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 


AN  INITIAL  FINE  OF  25  CENTS 

WILL  BE  ASSESSED  FOR  FAILURE  TO  RETURN 
THIS  BOOK  ON  THE  DATE  DUE.  THE  PENALTY 
WILL  INCREASE  TO  SO  CENTS  ON  THE  FOURTH 
DAY  AND  TO  $1.OO  ON  THE  SEVENTH  DAY 
OVERDUE. 


J 


«« 

1940 


'AHft23J970  0 


W^- 


LD  21-100m-7,'39(402s) 


YC  27124 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


